Kab U
Kab U
Kab U
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What Books Can I Read to Understand Kabbalah? ....................................................................................... 8
Would Kabbalah Be a Form of Esotericism or Mysticism? Why? .......................................................... 10
What Are the Core Teachings of Kabbalah? ................................................................................................. 11
What Is Kabbalah Numerology? ........................................................................................................................ 13
What Is the Significance of Kabbalah, and Especially the Kabbalah Tree of Life? .......................... 14
What Is the Difference Between the Physical World and the Spiritual World?................................ 15
What Does Spirituality Mean to You?.............................................................................................................. 17
How Do You Know When You Have Awakened Spiritually? ................................................................... 18
How Long Does a Spiritual Awakening Take? .............................................................................................. 19
What Does Consciousness Mean in a Spiritual Context? ......................................................................... 20
What Does the Average Person Not Understand about the Coronavirus Pandemic? .................. 21
How Will the Coronavirus Affect the World Economy? ............................................................................ 22
When Will the Coronavirus End? ....................................................................................................................... 25
Can Wearing Masks Stop the Spread of the Coronavirus?...................................................................... 27
What Will Happen if the Coronavirus Comes Back in a Second Wave? ............................................. 28
Is the U.S. Making a Mistake by Reopening the Economy So Soon? .................................................. 31
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What Is the Reason for Depression? ................................................................................................................ 38
What Are the Solutions for Eliminating the Constant Feeling of Loneliness? .................................. 39
What Should I Do to Feel Less Stressed? ....................................................................................................... 40
Why Do Bad Things Happen in My Life? ........................................................................................................ 42
Why Do Bad Things Always Happen to Me? It Is as Through Every Time I Finally Get Over
Something, Another Bad Thing Happens to Me. ........................................................................................ 43
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What Is the Best Way to Improve Life? ........................................................................................................... 71
What Makes You Optimistic About the Future? .......................................................................................... 72
How Do I Win the Hearts of People? ............................................................................................................... 73
What Are Some of the Best Skills for the Future? ....................................................................................... 73
4
The wisdom of Kabbalah has been cloaked in mystery for millennia, since its
inception around 5,000 years ago.
Many concepts have been taken from the wisdom of Kabbalah and filtered
through various sciences, mysticism, religions and other teachings, but
authentic Kabbalah has been studied and developed by a relatively small
amount of individuals and groups throughout history, mostly in hiding from
society at large.
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In our world, we perceive a very small fragment of the complete reality
surrounding us, as the superior power and the forces stemming from it are
concealed from our perception.
five upper worlds (Ein Sof, Atzilut, Beria, Yetzira and Assiya),
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ten Sefirot (Keter, Hochma, Bina, Hesed, Gevura, Tifferet,
Netzah, Hod, Yesod and Malchut), and
125 Partzufim.
The science of Kabbalah is unique in the way it talks about you and me,
about all of us. It doesn’t deal with anything abstract, only with the way we
are created and how we function at higher levels of existence.
One of its sections talks about the descent of the higher forces from the
world of Ein Sof (Infinity). The world of Ein Sof is our initial state, and there
we exist as a single, unified system of souls, completely interconnected.
Then, from the world of Ein Sof, we study the sequence of worlds, Sefirot
and Partzufim as they descend to the world we live in.
Many Kabbalistic books have been written about it, starting with Abraham
the Patriarch around 4,000 years ago, who wrote a book called Sefer Yetzira
(The Book of Creation).
The next important work is The Book of Zohar, written in the second
century CE. The Zohar is followed by the works of the Ari, a renowned 16th
century Kabbalist. And the 20th century saw the appearance of the works of
Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam).
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existence, and how our world came into being, the universe, our globe, and
how life evolved. Studying how that system was created and how it
descends to our world allows us to master the method of entering this
system and governing it.
We, for the most part, study the six volume textbook Talmud Eser Sefirot
(The Study of the Ten Sefirot), written by Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag. It is
designed as a study aid with questions, answers, materials for repetition
and memorization, explanations, graphics and drawings. This is, if you will,
the physics of the upper world, describing the laws and forces governing
the universe.
The science of Kabbalah does not deal with life in this world. Instead, by
studying this system we re-attain our level before we descended, the same
level where we will be at the end of our ascent from this world. During this
ascent, the study of Kabbalah builds within the student a system equal to
the higher system.
This system begins to organize and manifest itself in the person who wants
to achieve it, and who studies it for this purpose. Just like a drop of semen
can potentially evolve into a human being, and subsequently grows into a
mature grown-up, the science of Kabbalah develops our desire to attain a
higher level of existence.
At first this is a tiny desire, called a “point in the heart.” This point is like the
embryo of our future states. By studying the structure of the upper world,
we develop the “genetic” information within it, and as it grows, the
structure resembling the higher levels forms within us.
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In so doing, the science of Kabbalah gives us the opportunity to feel the
upper worlds, to understand everything that happens to us, and most of all,
to control this process for ourselves.
Kabbalah is a science that teaches the law of reality, of which we are a part.
Through this science, we discover those rules and the spiritual world, which
is the reason for everything that happens here with us. They are collective
rules, which encompass the laws of all the sciences in our world.
At this point, we begin to work not from within our own bodies, but from
our souls, which are our true essence. The human being is not the physical
body that is replaced at the beginning of each new life. The human being is
the soul that we currently do not sense.
The purpose of creation is that we will act from within our souls, from the
upper world, and live at the highest degree possible, rather than in the
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lowest (our world), which is at an animal level. By discovering our souls, we
attain contact with the upper world, and thus achieve a whole, complete,
eternal and blissful life.
The wisdom of Kabbalah describes how nature works on all of its levels: still,
vegetative, animate and human. It engages in how we are made and
operate at deeper levels of reality, and not in any abstractions.
One of Kabbalah’s areas of study is in how forces cascade from our original
state, which it calls “the world of Ein Sof (Infinity),” where our souls exist as
a unified system, through a series of worlds, Sefirot and Partzufim to our
world.
Baal HaSulam’s texts are optimal for our current era. They describe the
structure of the worlds, their descent and succession through many lower
worlds, all the way to the creation and evolution of our world, our universe
and everything in it.
By learning the system of the worlds, how they emerged and descended
into our world, we can then rise through that system back to the root where
we were originally created.
One of Baal HaSulam’s key texts that we study is his six-volume work,
Talmud Eser Sefirot (The Study of the Ten Sefirot). It is a modern textbook
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in Kabbalah study, including Q&A, diagrams, as well as material for
repetition and memorization, which explains the succession of worlds,
Sefirot and Partzufim.
Kabbalistic texts change those who study them. How? It is because they
contain special forces that their authors inserted into them. When students
seek their way into the deeper layers of reality through the texts, they adapt
themselves to the worlds that they study.
The wisdom of Kabbalah engages solely in the spiritual worlds, and not in
this world. Via the study of Kabbalah, we attain the place we had in those
worlds before our descent to this world. While we rise to that place, called
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“the root of our soul,” we develop spiritual qualities that we lack in our
world.
The spiritual system starts establishing itself in the person who desires its
attainment, and who studies it with that objective. While we are alive in this
world, we feel the beginnings of the spiritual desire as a very small point,
called in Kabbalah the “point in the heart.”
The point in the heart can be likened to a drop of semen, which contains all
the future states of the human being, and which only requires the proper
environment and conditions in order to realize its full potential.
Then, the more our spiritual desire develops, the more we feel a new world
opening up inside us.
As such, the wisdom of Kabbalah provides us with the means to sense the
spiritual worlds, to understand both our own nature and the nature of
everything around us, and also, to take charge of such a process.
Gematria in Kabbalah is one way a Kabbalist can convey his situation to his
student. The kabbalist teacher can take the “case” of his own situation, then
copy and express it in a form of an accurate mathematical formula, i.e.
Gematria, conveying it to the student. The student then takes that formula,
finds it within himself and implements it through his own spiritual powers.
This way he goes through the same situation as his teacher. Gematria is a
mathematical formula that expresses the sum total of our spiritual
experiences.
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Kabbalah’s significance is purely practical. When humanity reaches
helplessness, not knowing how to progress, what it exists for, and what is
urging it to continue surviving, it develops a need for Kabbalah.
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The difference between the physical (or, corporeal) world and the spiritual
world is the difference between receiving and giving.
The spiritual world is a world of bestowal, giving and altruism, and its
opposite is the corporeal world with its qualities of reception, taking and
egoism.
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We see ourselves as living in a massive physical world and universe.
However, it is all a tiny point, like an imprint or a shadow, of the lowest
spiritual world. Similar to a shadow or an imprint, it has no life in and of
itself.
Yet we “live” inside this shadow, like in a dream. We remain in this state
until we replace the shadow with the first spiritual level called “this world,”
the beginning of the spiritual ladder. The most difficult part of the process
is ascending to this first level, since it is completely opposite to us, and
therefore concealed.
If someone told you that you would receive the opportunity to give others
everything you have, including your life, would you consider it as
something appealing worth aspiring toward?
Certainly not.
That is why the “impure forces” hide spirituality from you. They deceive you
according to the principle that “the peel/shell (Klipa) protects the fruit.”
A person who begins the spiritual path first encounters the Klipa (impure
force) that provides the feeling that it is worthwhile to discover spirituality
in order to feel good. Such a discernment is sufficient for the person to
start the spiritual path, i.e. to start coming closer to the spiritual world, the
person’s original root.
Continuing to tread the spiritual path, the person wavers to and fro:
sometimes passionately striving for spirituality, and sometimes doubting
whether there is anything worthwhile in spirituality at all. However,
throughout all these scrutinies, the person makes spiritual progress.
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Spirituality is above our corporeal reality. It is a completely opposite
perception and sensation to our inborn bodily one.
What does it mean that we are born into an egoistic human nature? It
means that everything we do is ultimately aimed at personal benefit.
The egoistic motor constantly running behind our every thought, desire
and action is wrenched into our worldview more than we are aware of,
blocking our ability to see us all connected, like members of a single family,
since it filters out the absolute love that exists in our connections at the
roots of our soul.
Instead of identifying with our “I’s,” we identify with the causal force behind
its corporeal manifestations. That is made possible by attaining an identical
intention toward others as the Creator: an intention of absolute love and
bestowal.
Spirituality is outside time, space, motion and the animate body. It is felt
solely in a new sense—a sincere intention to benefit the other—which is
regularly exercised and developed on the spiritual path.
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You shift to a more unified reality from the current divisive one.
It feels as if you wake up from a dream: You see an evil and unjust world all
around you, and then you close your eyes again, and reawaken into a
perfectly harmonious world.
The awful world that you first saw was all in a dream, and you did not want
to be there anymore.
When you awaken the second time, you see a balanced world and not the
one that you saw in your dream. Kabbalists wrote about such a spiritual
revelation, “They were as dreamers.”
The question is: How can we wake up from our worsening nightmare into a
peaceful, balanced and harmonious world? The answer is by changing our
perception of reality.
We currently live in a perfect world, nothing less than Heaven, where there
is total goodness and not a shred of evil. The sole obstacle we have in
sensing reality as such is our perception. Therefore, by changing our
perception, we change the world we live in.
Our current perception of reality is the lowest of them all, where all
goodness inverts to its opposite form. Outside this perception is the
tranquil and sublime world of Ein Sof (Infinity), but we perceive this eternal
goodness through senses that greatly limit it to a tiny, transient and
negative picture.
By learning how to rise above our current perception of reality, we will see
ourselves blanketed in a warmth of love that we have no awareness of in
our current level.
The process of rising above our current perception of reality to one that is
perfectly connected, harmonious and eternal is called a process of
“correction” in the wisdom of Kabbalah. The changes we undergo in our
perception and sensation of reality are considered corrections, and the
more corrected we become, the more positive and harmonious the world
will appear.
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Essentially, correcting ourselves and transforming our perception is a
process of rising above our divisive drives, and by doing so, we see how
others’ attitudes also change toward us.
The length of time for each person’s spiritual awakening depends on the
state of the collective system we are all parts of, which develops to an
increasingly unified state, and how we are needed in that system.
A person is a small part of the collective system, which is called “the soul of
Adam HaRishon” in the wisdom of Kabbalah. This system determines each
person’s appearance in this world and development toward our final unified
state.
When on this path, we then need only do whatever is in our hands to do,
and then the time it takes to receive further spiritual awakening no longer
depends on us.
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Reaching such a state means harmonizing with the collective system we are
parts of, benefiting the system by contributing to its harmony, and
discovering the root of our soul.
In spiritual consciousness, the soul is linked with the Creator, which is the
force of love and bestowal existing in the corrected connection between us.
This soul senses and is filled by the force of love and bestowal, even at least
to a small degree. It is anything that is out of and above time, space and
motion, that is not in any way linked with the sensation of the animate
body but is felt in some inner space in a person’s senses—an intention to
love and bestow. It is also revealed only when the person is in control of the
“spiritual” bearer.
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Whether or not the average person understands what I will write below,
here’s what I think every person needs to take away from this coronavirus
pandemic:
The pandemic will not be over with anytime soon, despite the
easing of stay-at-home orders starting to take effect.
Curing the coronavirus requires a step toward more mutual
consideration and responsibility among us all, from the
average person to world leaders.
The coronavirus struck a blow to the egoistic-competitive rat
race we were running, and over time we have calmed down
our consumerist lifestyles, where it was a norm to exploit
others for personal profit purposes.
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I think that we can look forward to a positive future, which will be calmer
than how we used to live, with more balance among each other and with
nature.
Weeks and months of isolation will play their role in transforming us.
Do we really think that the moment all the restrictions are lifted, we will be
running back to malls, filling our bags with piles of extra clothes and plastic
goods, and flying to tourist destinations left, right and center again?
I think not.
One of the major takeaways from this pandemic is that we have cooled off
our approaches to each other where we each aimed to self-benefit at the
expense of others, and that we see a clear example of nature treating all
people equally—which we would be wise to apply to each other.
Nature is working with us, trying to wake us up to the fact that we are all in
the same boat, and I expect that we will come out of this pandemic with
more awareness of our common status in the wider perspective of nature
as a whole.
Editor’s Note: This answer was first posted on the website Quora on April 25, 2020,
during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic.
To start with, after this prolonged period of the conditions that the
coronavirus has placed us into, our attitude to the world will become
different and there will be major changes.
The post-coronavirus world will be new. Our behaviors and connections will
be different to what they were before the coronavirus.
I think that we will have a better feel of what is and is not essential in life,
and that we will value a more internal definition of connection and
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closeness to each other. The extent of our psychological change will
determine the extent of change in our systems, the economy included.
The more that we endure this period, the more our awareness of what is
most important in life will increase. In turn, this will calm us down from our
egoistic-competitive rat race that we used to run.
In terms of how the world economy will actually look at the end of the
coronavirus period, I don’t think we can depict the changes in the
meantime, because time has to play its role. We have been in these
conditions for a little over a month. Let’s say we will be in these conditions
for another six months. We cannot yet imagine the changes we would have
gone through at the end of such a period.
Ideally, we would operate in more balance with nature, i.e. with more
mutual consideration and responsibility. It means acting like one big family
that looks at the means it has at its disposal, and how it can best allocate
what it has to every member in a mutually-beneficial way.
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Likewise, if we make no strides in this attitude shift, we can expect no such
motions to make our economy more balanced with nature.
That is why I think it is still too early to say how the economy and world will
look at the end of the coronavirus period. It is like we are in a train that left
its previous stop, and we are headed to the next stop, which we have never
visited before.
The sooner we will reach mutually considerate attitudes to each other and
an economy that reflects that attitude shift, the sooner we will see less
violence, crime and abuse of all kinds in society, together with increased
personal and social happiness.
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In Hebrew, the word for “money” (“Kesef”) has the same linguistic root as
the word for “covering” (“Kisui”). Therefore, if we change the covering over
our society from a consumerist value of one’s self-worth that accords to the
amount of wealth, status and power one has, to one where we value not
individual wealth, status and power, but people’s contribution to a
positively connected society, then we would be on our way to a world that
is more balanced with nature, and we would thus experience more
harmonious lives.
Despite the high anticipation for COVID-19’s demise, it is here to stay for a
while.
The coronavirus emerged in order to change the way we think, and it will
remain with us until we complete this transformation.
Similar to how people get used to living with chronic diseases, so too we as
humanity will get used to the coronavirus. It will simply become an integral
part of our lives.
Even much of the engagement that the coronavirus has brought upon us
has acted to exemplify our dependence on each other, i.e. how we depend
on each other to wear masks, keep a certain standard of personal hygiene,
maintain our distance from each other and quarantine ourselves if we
knowingly contact people with the virus.
We thus see how a small virus has helped us start seeing a more connected
world, which operates on everyone and where everyone holds mutual
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influence, and it will continue to “teach” us such wisdom the more it stays
with us.
We would thus be wise to internalize how we are all parts of a single system
that is developing toward a new state of balance with nature. That is, as
nature is interdependent and interconnected, so we also discover more and
more of nature’s and our own interconnectedness the more we develop.
However, either way, nature presses us to connect more and more, like a
steamroller of evolution that flattens our egoistic and harmful attitudes to
each other. It squashes our egos like a lemon squeezer against a lemon and
will continue doing so until all of our egoistic juices become extracted. At
that stage, we will find a new kind of fulfillment in such qualities that
currently seem less important or even ugly to us, like kindness, altruism,
giving and consideration of others.
If only we could see that there is a very clear line from our current reality to
a new, unified and perfect one—that nature has a state of perfection in
store for us and carefully guides us there—then we would encounter
everything in our lives more confidently, with a sense of purpose.
Now, we are divided in our attitudes to each other, and more than anything
else, this division causes all of our pains. Our division is expressed as each
of us being primarily concerned with self-benefit over benefiting others,
which is opposite to nature’s holistic characteristic. Suffering is the
differential we feel between our state and nature’s state, and it operates on
us to make us connect.
The more we make strides to connect with each other, the more balanced
we will become with nature, and we will thus experience an inversion of our
pains and sorrows to pleasures and joy. We need only agree to connect
above our divisive drives that constantly pull in the other direction, and
when we reach such an agreement, we will likewise experience its benefits.
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Thus, viewing humanity as a single organism and nature as its superior, we
can see how nature vaccinated humanity with the coronavirus in order to
heal us from our divisive attitudes to each other.
Therefore, we should look out for each other, consider how we can prevent
viruses of any kind to pass to others, from physical diseases to any kinds of
harmful thoughts, and by exercising this mutual responsibility and
consideration, the coronavirus will disappear from our lives.
The coronavirus pays no attention to the fact that we are reopening our
economies and trying to return to our pre-coronavirus lives.
It will continue infecting more and more people until we undergo a serious
attitude adjustment.
If we thought that the pandemic was under control, the time has come to
think again.
The second wave of the coronavirus is already being widely discussed, even
though the first wave never really stopped. The economy’s reopening has
helped bolster an influx of COVID-19 outbreaks worldwide, and we once
again face an uncertain future regarding the pandemic.
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I am certain, however, that our world has undergone an irreversible change,
and that we would be wise to realize how nature tightens our dependence
on each other. As much as we want it to become a thing of the past, the
coronavirus is here to stay for a while. We need to come to terms with it
being with us for a long time, and we should revise our socio-economic
approach accordingly.
The World Bank has stated that the pandemic will be responsible for the
biggest recession since the Second World War. We can still expect the
closure of many businesses, a dramatic rise in unemployment, and as more
and more people dig into the depths of their savings accounts, more and
more people will face unpayable loans, rents and mortgages.
Such immense changes demand that we make some changes on our own
behalf.
Authorities should make sure that their populations receive essential goods
and services, adjusting their budgets accordingly.
We will also need to get used to luxury goods losing their allure. There will
be no need to invest in saving or reviving luxury goods businesses due to
their diminished demand. Also, the increased awareness about the
ecological harm that many such businesses contribute to further illustrates
their non-necessity.
Our lives are on track to become calmer and more essentials-focused than
we have been used to, and which our prior economy failed to prepare us
for.
Any desires for surplus, any drives to progress and make breakthroughs in
society, should likewise also be refocused. There is endless room for
developing positive connections in society, and we would be wise to focus
our growth on improving human connections.
By doing so, we would be on track to a whole new reality than the one we
currently know, one where we experience our tightening interdependence
not as a growing burden, but as an opportunity to exercise positive
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relations and share in a newfound harmony, happiness and confidence
throughout society.
We can think of the coronavirus like a treadmill that humanity has started
walking on, and when we get off this treadmill, we will have lost a lot of the
materialistic-competitive fat that was weighing us down before the
pandemic.
Now, more than ever before, we need to stay focused on our new stage of
growth, that what nourished us in our previous stage no longer works, and
to meet our new conditions, we need to develop positive connections to
each other.
Editor’s Note: This answer was first posted on the website Quora on June 23, 2020, with
new sudden spreads of the coronavirus the reopening of the economy in various
countries.
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If anyone thinks that reopening the economy will start bringing back the
same world we lived in before the coronavirus, then think again.
Letting many more businesses run will not mean that people will
immediately go back to spending on all kinds of nonessential items again.
What I propose is that instead of fighting this losing battle of reigniting the
consumerism we used to live in, that governments instead provide
everyone involved in unsustainable businesses a new kind of work, one
where they learn about human society’s growing interdependence, and
how to realize this interdependence that drops down on us in a positive
manner.
By doing so, they will receive an income that would cover their needs, and
gradually grow into educators of how to enrich positive connection
throughout society.
In other words, governments would do well to shift their focus away from
reviving a consumerist economy, where wealth equates to success, to
creating sustainable societies where people’s essential needs are covered in
exchange for participating in the creation of a new society led by values of
mutual consideration, responsibility and solidarity.
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Editor’s Note: This answer was first posted on the website Quora on April 27, 2020, with
new sudden spreads of the coronavirus the reopening of the economy in various
countries.
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A true act of love is when I do something good for someone I love only
because I want to delight that person, even without their knowing that I’m
the one who did this good thing, and even if I do not derive any direct
pleasure from it. Love would be my only motivation to act.
The Torah explains that a true act of altruism (love of others) is when one
party does not know about the other party, whether or not the party is
giving. Otherwise, there is pleasure derived from it.
If the Creator knows about a person’s act, this is already a reward. But for
true giving, there need not be any kind of reward. We always speak from
the perspective of the person with real feelings and not of abstract
creatures. One must come to that sensation of genuine giving step by step,
meaning one must attain the spiritual level of giving while in the meantime
performing it only mechanically.
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However, all the while, we should be aware that such existence is only
mechanical, in the degree of this world, our temporary place.
Love is a quality, a force and a longing to fulfill the desires of others, which
is directed from the person outward.
If we have shared habits, thoughts and opinions with others, then we know
how to fulfill them and express our love.
We can then understand our own feelings when we receive the same kind
of fulfillment, so we know how to fulfill them.
Love is our most exalted connection with everything outside of us, which
harmonizes us with nature and its laws.
Love is a means to become like nature, which is a quality of love, bestowal
and connection. It exists outside of us. There is no love in individual beings.
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Love is the exclusive quality of nature that is given to us, and with the help
of such a quality, we can elevate ourselves from the animate degree of
existence to the human degree. In Hebrew, the word for “human” (“Adam”)
comes from the word for “similar” (“Domeh”), and a human is considered
one who becomes “similar to the most high” (“Domeh le Elyon”). In other
words, becoming a human means becoming like nature’s quality of love,
bestowal and connection, which is outside and opposite to our inborn
animate qualities.
As a result, we are not very concerned about loving each other in actual
fact. We are raised through a multitude of influences that completely
neglect the question of how we can reach true love among people.
Therefore, the question here is correct, and we should definitely stop and
pay attention to it: Is it important to have love in life? Is love really that
important?
If we wish to understand ourselves and the world we live in, then we have
to attain the laws of nature, which are fundamentally laws of love and
connection. Without attaining love for others, or as it was written, “Love
your neighbor as yourself,” we will be unable to discover who or where we
are.
Love is the key that lets us see the entire picture of reality accurately, to
understand, feel and become included in it, and to use it for self-realization.
There is a general phenomenon and there are particular cases of it. There is
a law of universal bestowal, and for us it is first and foremost expressed as
the social principle, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” By realizing this
principle in society, we carry out the universal law. It controls us, and if we
want to arrange our lives well, we have to aspire to its realization.
As much as we depict the extent of our love for ourselves, we need to love
others to that same extent.
As the human ego, the attribute of self-love, constantly grows in each and
every person, then the more we develop, the more we love ourselves.
Our self-love should then serve as an example for how we should love
others.
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The path to reaching “love your neighbor as yourself” is thus a path that
has a necessary first stage, which is defined as “don’t do to others what you
hate.” By exercising not doing to others what we hate, we gradually learn
how to rise above the ego that separates us from each other and develop
the quality of bestowal above our innate quality of reception. By doing so,
we develop our readiness to reach the sublime state of “love your neighbor
as yourself.”
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We are currently in a major transitional era between an individualistic,
egoistic paradigm and an opposite collective, altruistic one.
38
but right now—we will then become ready to accept a method that unites
us above our differences and divisions.
Logically, if we feel bad, then we would start seeking remedies for our
negative feelings. But what can we do if we see no solutions? What do we
live for? In the end, the only solution left will be to discover the meaning of
life, since knowingly or unknowingly, it is ultimately what we all want.
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Eventually, loneliness will break through into a new phase of complete
apathy toward everything, and it will be part of a natural process that leads
us to the discovery of a whole new life. In some ways, it is a kind of death.
By crossing this barrier, we discover that there is another much better life,
and start living it.
A person must suffer a kind of death—to realize, agree with, and want to
give up the constant egoistic pursuit that ultimately bears no fruits—in
order to start truly living. Once we agree with this transition, we then
become ready for the next life.
My advice to the lonely, all who feel alienated from the world, is to go and
read the material that was made for answering the question about the
meaning of life. There is nothing else that I can recommend. From the
bottom of my heart, there is nothing else I see that I could offer.
The problem today, which is also why stress is on the rise, is that our desire
to enjoy grows from one generation to the next, and we thus need more
and different kinds of enjoyment to fulfill ourselves.
Likewise, since we all wish to enjoy ourselves more and more, we find
ourselves in a situation where we need to share with others, and it becomes
increasingly difficult to enjoy our lives.
40
Stress follows us our entire lives, from the moment we leave our mother’s
arms until the moment we die.
Today, we need to meet society’s higher standards. That is, we are raised
with examples of fierce competition in order to reach lavish wealth and
success, and are under constant pressure to keep up with today’s social
standards.
Situations where both parents work all day, neglecting their children, have
become commonplace. Such children are left in the hands of kindergartens
and schools from early morning until afternoon on a daily basis, an
environment which is itself very stressful for them.
In order to find calm, safety and confidence, the children try to be like their
peers, seeking to “hide” among them.
After the initial stage of fitting in, when they feel accepted by their peers,
the desire to enjoy then continues pressuring them from within, making
them want to stand out.
They sway back and forth between their comfortable state where they fit in,
and an ambitiousness to express their pride and power. The bigger the ego,
the more they become willing to step outside of their comfort zone and put
themselves at risk.
These two poles of remaining in our comfort zones versus the desire to be
a prominent figure in society stay with us our entire lives, placing us under
constant stress.
41
In addition, the social and media influences that continuously bombard us
with competitive, materialistic, and individualistic images of success, i.e.
where being more successful is perceived as being stronger, richer, faster or
more unique than others in a variety of ways, add immensely to the stress
we feel, as it becomes increasingly harder to stand out in such a society.
Thus, rates of depression, anxiety, loneliness, drug abuse and suicide all
increase together with rising stress rates.
Bad things do not actually happen to us, but a certain kind of revelation
takes place that we have to correct.
In other words, we perceive bad and negative events unfolding in our lives
in order to perform a correction. “Correction” means that we should aim to
build positive connections with others, reaching mutual understanding,
decisions, consideration and activity.
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More broadly, human nature is a desire to enjoy, and this desire undergoes
a process of development from its initial broken state, which gives us the
perception of separation from others and nature, to a state where our
desire acquires a corrected form, where it enjoys from loving, giving to, and
being positively connected with others and nature.
The wisdom of Kabbalah explains the initial shattering of this desire in the
story about the sin of the Tree of Knowledge, also known as the shattering
of the soul of Adam HaRishon. Our entire development leads us to a point
where we will need to correct this egoistic desire, and to acquire a form
that is similar to nature—altruistic.
The sooner we can agree to such a goal and organize ourselves in society
to realize positive connections, then the sooner we will shift from a
development where we see increasing amounts of “bad things” surfacing in
our lives, to one where we become balanced with nature.
Then, when we balance with the altruistic and integral form that nature is
urging us to reach, we will experience a whole new level of harmony,
happiness, confidence and safety, together with full understanding and
sensation of who and what we are, and why we were put here in this reality.
Indeed, we often find ourselves asking why bad things keep happening to
us, especially when it does not stand to reason that we deserve all kinds of
negative outcomes from our seemingly positive or even just neutral
behavior.
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What is the connection between our behavior and the outcomes we
experience in life?
To add salt to the wounds, we can find people such as criminals living
seemingly good lives, while people who worked hard to enter professions
that serve society could be suffering their entire lives, and we are then left
to ponder why life could be so unfair.
Our inability to make sense of this dilemma stems from our inability to
understand the complexity of our interconnectedness and
interdependence. We cannot grasp the rippling domino effect of our
behavior in the world, and have no clear or direct perception of the
responses to our actions.
Yet, every single one of our thoughts and actions influences the system in
which we exist, and they each enable a response. We simply cannot piece
together why things take place the way that they do.
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We should thus refrain from pointing our finger at some person, some
group or something else that we think causes bad things in our lives. We
should also refrain from digging into our past for actions that might have
brought about our current negative experiences.
We should accept their inevitability and use them to spark questions about
their cause and purpose: that they come in order for us to exit our
individualistic worldviews and enter a much greater and complete integral
one. We do so by better and more actively connecting with our
surrounding society. We should thus seek a society that encourages and
supports us to rise above the current level of our lives, where we have no
access to perceiving the complexity of the system we exist in, and enter into
a much greater perception and sensation of reality. We do so by positively
connecting to others, where we each develop attitudes of mutual giving
and concern toward one another, and by doing so, we gradually acquire a
new sense through which we feel life.
45
Before discussing ways of changing society, we should question what
changes society should acquire.
In our era, the needed change in society is a change of values, that instead
of valuing egoistic pursuits—to be more individually successful, wealthy,
famous and/or powerful—if we want a society that is full of healthy, happy
and confident individuals, then we need values of mutual responsibility,
consideration, cooperation and positive connection permeating society.
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Outside of our perception and sensation, there is a single force of nature
that acts out of absolute love, and which takes every single detail of reality
into careful consideration.
We simply need to gain more awareness about how nature works, how
human nature is an egoistic and self-centered form that opposes nature’s
general attribute of love, bestowal and connection, and how from the
negative pole of creation, we can invite the positive force into our lives, to
let it connect us, change our values, and likewise, our perception and
sensation of the integral reality we ultimately share.
We would see that, in its current state of development, its immune system
is barely working, and its cells and organs, which should be sustaining the
body’s health, are deteriorating.
Personal, social, economic and ecological problems are all on the rise,
including depression, stress, loneliness, emptiness, anxiety, xenophobia,
drug abuse, suicide, income equality, poverty and climate change, and
although many people are trying to patch and treat these problems, the
efforts fail to solve the problem at its overarching cause.
It is the human ego, i.e. the innate calculative mechanism in human nature
that prioritizes self-benefit over benefiting others, which makes society’s
47
individual “cells” each pull to themselves more than giving to others,
bringing on the downfall of the entire organism of human society.
As cancer happens when cells take more than they need at the expense of
the body, so our society is currently made up of egoists each guided by an
enveloping egoistic paradigm that supports the idea of success as
becoming individually wealthy, famous and powerful.
That we are egoists is a nature-given situation, but the social influence and
public opinion that supports egoistic goals and values is what is wrong with
society.
How can we then correct human nature, if it is the cause of all our
problems?
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It is against human nature to give and contribute to others, but if we
changed public opinion, our social and media influences, and also our
education, in order that we learn the nature of humanity’s increasing
interdependence today, how the human ego opposes our growing
interdependence and also why this is the cause of all our problems, and
that the way to resolve our myriad problems today is by correcting our
connections to each other—creating an environment that supports giving
and contributing to society, prioritizing values of mutual consideration and
responsibility over competitive and individualistic ideas of success—then
we would be on course to a monumental positive social transformation.
Behind every violent act, behind every rape, behind every abuse lurks a
growing desire constantly demanding its satisfaction: the human ego, i.e.
the desire to enjoy at the expense of others.
Some people are naturally more phlegmatic. Others have weak nerves and
can snap at any moment. But aside from people’s characteristics, when we
are raised in a society that consistently projects examples of violence,
extremity, polarization and incitement to us from a young age, then the
moment that ego within us is provoked, it has all the ingredients to erupt
49
and let madness overpower any control threshold we thought we could
hold.
It was not always like this. In the past, the ego was smaller. When I think
back to my childhood, I remember that placid family atmosphere that was
so characteristic of the traditional family structure: my father would go to
work during the day and return in the early evening, my mother would run
the home, and the home was at the center of the family’s life. This is how it
was for most people.
Today, however, this is no longer the case. There has been a great decline
in the amount of traditional family structures. But beyond that, even where
the traditional family is in place, the home is no longer the center of family
life. It is now on the streets, the TV, the movies, the media, video games, in
the smartphone, on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and other social media.
Our examples of traditional family relationships have been replaced by
examples pinned up by companies and media creators interested in
increasing their ratings, clicks and profits as opposed to providing good
examples for people to replicate in their lives. This is why we have lost
direction.
We can achieve the freedom for which we aspire, but freedom requires
preparation so that we can relate ethically to the amount of freedom we
get. Otherwise, freedom can easily lead to negative phenomena like gender
violence, rape and abuse. When we are allowed to do whatever we want,
yet regularly consume examples of violence, vulgarity and insensitivity, then
we increase the likelihood of imitating these examples. In other words,
instead of letting that potentially raging bull—egoistic human nature—
control us, we should learn how to tame that bull from the start.
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The process of taming this bull, i.e. taking control of the human ego, which
should ideally start from our infancy, needs to consist of practical examples
of how people mutually and positively connect: parents, friends, boys and
girls, men and women, and all different parts of society. We need to grow
up learning how to relate to everyone, understanding what they do, how to
accept all kinds of people, and how to actively construct our attitude
toward people and phenomena in our lives.
Groups, we will discover, are the most efficient tool for controlling any
outbursts of the ego. By learning everything in connection with others, we
would feel much closer to each other.
The deeper reason behind the violence is the alienation and estrangement
at the core of today’s American society—the feeling of not sharing the
same views, nationhood and ideologies with others—clashing with an
increased interdependence and interconnectedness that demands more
unification.
And we can expect the situation to get worse if the country’s divisions are
left untreated.
Instead of rummaging through the reasons for the violence, I’d like to shift
the emphasis to the solution…
The solution is that Americans need to work out how to live together.
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It is as if problems that were lurking in the shadows for many years have
exploded into the limelight, with much more resentment and hatred added
in the mix.
What this means in practice is that every citizen should be cared for by
having a respectable living standard secured in exchange for their
participation in activities that aim to increase unity above the divisions.
For the time being, many people are focused on pointing out the perceived
shortcomings of the views that oppose their own, and would seemingly be
happy to destroy those who hold contrary views. But there is no effective
long-term solution in such an approach.
Like any live organism that is composed of many systems that have pluses
and minuses, conductors and resistors, we have to learn how to rise above
the level of our individual “cells” and “organs” that we exist in, and see the
whole organism to which we all belong. We would then see the need for
opposing opinions and their role in balancing society. However, more
importantly, we would see how the focus on unity above division is of
utmost importance in discovering a newfound social harmony.
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then the more everyone will have to recognize both sides of the coin as
belonging to the same coin.
It is thus my hope that Americans will rise to the current test of the time
and start feeling the need to shift the emphasis to unite above the
divisions. Their positive future depends solely on this.
Editor’s Note: This answer was first posted on the website Quora on August 22, 2020.
Human nature is a self-serving egoistic desire that considers its own benefit
before the benefit of anyone else.
The more we develop, the more our egoistic quality grows, and likewise,
the more we try to benefit ourselves at the expense of other people and the
ecology.
In other words, the more we develop, the more our hatred toward each
other increases.
Outside our egoistic nature is nature in its positive, altruistic, loving and
giving form, which thinks and acts oppositely to the way in which we think
and act.
Genuine hatred thus reveals itself as we head toward love. That is, if we set
foot on a path to love each other as we love ourselves, as is the ultimate
law of nature, we will then start seeing hatred surfacing in us as a quality
that we need to fix in order to truly love others.
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And why would we want to love others?
Several events taking place in the world express the immense hatred
dwelling in humanity. We take sides against others in many areas of life,
and bridging our divides seems unthinkable.
We need to learn how to fix our hatred’s source—the human ego—so that
we would know how to cover it with love.
We feel worse and worse, more depressed, stressed, anxious and uncertain
about our future, but still are unaware of our negative sensations’ causes
and effects, and what we can do about it.
Without the increasing hatred and negativity filling our lives, we would also
be unable to sense a much fuller sense of enjoyment in love, as the
increasingly unraveling evil within us adds more appetite and yearning for a
genuine sensation of love to emerge.
Yet, we need not wait for pain and suffering to spur on the recognition of
our egoistic nature as evil in order to want it to change.
In short, we are sent hatred so that through our active efforts in building a
society that aims itself at loving one another, we could repair the hatred,
cover it with love, and by doing so, experience a new sense of harmony and
bliss spread throughout society.
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Unity is important because nature wants us to unite.
By uniting, we enter into balance with nature and awaken a positive force
dwelling in nature to surface among us. We then feel positive phenomena
fill our lives: happiness, confidence, peace and harmony.
Moreover, it is important that our unity is above all divisions, and not
merely the unity of one group against another. The latter is simply a group-
inflated ego that serves to increase division and hatred in society, and
which also leads to no ultimately positive outcome.
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Therefore, the importance of unity is the importance of our very survival,
and whether we live our lives harmoniously or painfully.
The more we develop, the more our egos grow, and in our era especially,
our egos have developed to such heights that we find it increasingly
difficult to fulfill ourselves.
Beyond our life’s essentials—food, sex, family and shelter—our egos make
us think that wealth, power and fame are important, so much so that many
people are willing to dedicate their entire lives in order to reach one or
more of those goals.
It has been written about the spiritual goal by those who have attained it,
that if a person would experience even the tiniest amount of spiritual
57
pleasure, then he would be willing to give away everything he has in
corporeality for the sake of spiritual growth.
We come to the spiritual path when we feel a certain kind of emptiness and
lack of fulfillment in our corporeal desires. As much as we fill ourselves with
food, sex, family, money, honor, control and knowledge, we keep finding
ourselves lacking, wanting something different, and eventually question
life’s meaning and essence.
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For instance, particles connected into atoms. Amalgamations that could
sustain their connections continued living, while those that failed to do so
broke down and became obsolete.
Nature shows us an example of how cells and organs function for the
benefit of the entire organisms that they inhabit and receive what they
need in order to operate for the whole organism’s benefit. If a cell receives
more than what it needs for the organism’s functioning, it becomes
cancerous and brings disease.
We can also expect more and more events that will show us the extent of
our interdependence—with each other and with nature.
Humanity is currently living under the rule of its egoistic nature, i.e. a nature
that makes each person prioritize self-benefit over benefiting other people,
society and the ecology.
Moreover, humans are the only part of nature under egoistic control. The
rest of nature—from still matter through plant and animal life—is bonded
integrally by altruistic ties.
The human ego cuts us off from the sensation of nature’s altruistic quality,
making us disagree with thinking and wanting to benefit the system we
exist in. In other words, contrary to the way cells and organs act to only
receive what they need for their survival and give all surplus for the benefit
of the whole organism that they exist in, we think and want solely with
“What will I get out of it?” at the basis of our every calculation, which leads
us to even act detrimentally toward others in the name of personal gain.
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of behavior. In other words, we head deeper and deeper into a crisis, but
we have yet to reach such a depth where we will simply raise our hands and
wish for the right kind of change.
However, I still see that we fail to draw the correct conclusions from this
situation we are now in. We have reached no understanding of the deeper
causes behind the virus and avoid responsibility on our behalf for its
spread. We merely await its end so that we can let our egos loose on the
world once again and remain blind to how nature will send us much more
difficult states the more we neglect self-transformation.
Until we reach the conclusion that our egoistic nature needs changing, we
will continue trying to exploit nature by all possible means, failing to
foresee the next smack nature will deliver us to once again hint at how the
way we are headed is incorrect.
I thus hope that we will wake up to this change sooner rather than later, out
of our own awareness, through learning how nature works, how we
function within nature, and by exercising how we can accelerate this fateful
change with our own efforts to invert our egoistic nature to an altruistic
nature in balance with nature.
When we eventually make that change, we will experience a completely
new world of harmony, happiness, peace and tranquility, and will look back
at our current state as a depraved one: the last throes of death of an
egoistic paradigm before our greatest ever transformation.
The question is what will happen to society after marijuana legalization and
standardization?
It seems as if legalizing marijuana will help make society calmer. Yet, it will
fail to relax us because we will proceed to a new form of suffering
afterward, which will be much more powerful than our previous forms; so
powerful that drugs will fail to provide any escape from them.
Psychoactive drugs have always been available to humanity but were not
used on a mainstream level. The reason is embedded in nature itself: it does
not want us to put ourselves to sleep. Nature guides us to higher and
higher levels of connection, and in our present world, we can see how we
have been pushed to live in a global world, with global technologies and
economies connecting us worldwide, yet our inner psychology has yet to
match the global level of connectedness that nature had led us too.
Therefore, due to increasing stress and other problems emerging from
humanity’s failure to match nature’s connectedness, we think of ways to
calm ourselves down, to escape from the world, and bring about drug
legalization as a way to calm the masses.
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In order to stop natural disasters, we first need to understand what causes
them, and then see whether and how we can stop them from their cause.
We humans are bearers of nature’s negative force since we are guided only
by the force of reception—egoism. Therefore, in order to experience a
positive response from nature, we need to balance our quality—egoism,
reception—with nature’s quality—altruism, giving. Our inclination to want
to receive everything for ourselves needs to shift to one of giving and
consideration of others. Our establishing of balance at the human social
64
level will have positive rippling effects throughout nature, and we will then
experience a positive response from nature, which would mean a stop to
natural disasters among them.
Yet, nature does nothing bad. It holds a constant benevolent attitude, and
due to human nature’s opposition to nature in and of itself, we feel myriad
phenomena in life as bad and evil. We need not blame ourselves or nature
for this clash of opposites; it is simply a given situation that we were born
into.
If we, however, treated nature altruistically, i.e. if we could work with nature
according to the same principle by which nature relates to us, in balance
with nature, then we could receive 100 percent of the desired energy from
nature in exchange for relating to nature completely with the same attitude.
Animals eat other because they instinctively follow nature's law of constant
renewal of life, where each following generation is born on the basis of the
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previous one. It is a process similar to the substitution of used-up cells by
new ones in our body.
In other words, each cell and organ automatically gives the body whatever
it needs. It even obeys orders to self-destruct due to its fulfillment of a
certain function and using up its resource. Its program switches off, and the
cell destroys itself. The general law of existence of a system, organism or
organ, controls all of its elements.
The same occurs to life cycles: unless we had to die in the previous life, we
would not be born in the next. There would be no development that drives
us toward something we do not yet know. It seems that there is nothing
good in this form of development. However, it does in fact lead to a bright
future.
Therefore, by eating a hare or a calf, the wolf fulfills nature's law. There is
no hatred between them. There is no love either. It is simply a realization of
the law of nature that sustains correct interactions between species.
The involvement of the “self” is out of the question. Vegetative and animate
elements of nature have no “self,” no sensation of “I.” It is remarkable how,
without the appearance of the self, there is a harmonious and wholesome
existence of vegetative and animate organisms or cells in the body.
However, the human being should introduce his desire and approval of this
law of nature, and his intention, into this harmonious system. If we attain
this understanding and willingly strive to participate in the integral
development and interaction, then we begin to understand nature. We
discover those parts and voids of nature that we do not currently perceive:
new dimensions and worlds where we exist totally differently, before birth
and after death, as parts of nature in our eternal state.
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Everything depends only on the transition from our universal hatred (our
egoism) to love. Making this transition is, in fact, our only real problem.
Everything else that we experience as problems or crises in our lives is
rooted in our opposition to, or imbalance with, the system of nature we
exist in. By undergoing such a transition, our lives and our human relations
would then become simple and harmonious.
One key lesson is that the pandemic is only an initial blow from nature, and
we can expect many more blows in more severe forms because the time
has come for us to undergo a major transformation: a shift in our entire
approach to life, from a competitive self-centered approach to one where
we share mutual responsibility and consideration for each other and nature.
Especially in the realm of work, we have built a society filled with businesses
and professions that we have no real need for.
Through the pandemic, nature started filtering out the nonessential from
the essential. Businesses that served our basic needs continued serving us,
while those we had no real need for became sidelined.
If we look at the animal sphere, we see how a certain amount of animals die
off, and others develop in their place, according to various changes that
appear in nature.
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It is impossible to remain calm in any situation. Also, we do not have to
always be calm.
Aggravation, agitation and stress are states that nature urges us to feel in
order to reach the recognition of our human ego as the cause of the
turbulence, and by doing so, develop a sincere new desire to rise above the
ego.
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At this juncture, we need a supportive environment where we feel
encouragement and confidence in order to rise above the ego.
In our era, however, the overblown human ego—the desire to enjoy at the
expense of others—does not let us feel good. It causes rifts throughout
society. We see that the world is falling apart because nature’s integral form
increasingly wants to enter our world, and we in turn feel our opposition to
nature’s integral form. For example, the more we become connected
technologically and economically around the world, the more we also
experience growing depression, loneliness, anxiety, stress and other
problems.
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We can be optimistic about the future if we observe how nature works on
us.
Nature is a live system that has created us, and which includes us within
itself.
The ways it operates is above our perception. That is, as we perceive only
the most self-serving information through limiting senses, nature, on the
other hand, has no self-interest, but takes care of every detail in reality with
utmost precision. Thus, our entire experience of life is embedded in nature.
If we assume that what we now see around us in the world is all there is, we
fail to account for much greater, more expansive and fulfilling states that
nature has in store for us.
You can win the hearts and love of other people by loving them, which
means feeling their desires and doing everything possible in order to fulfill
them. You will then act toward them in a way that they like and enjoy.
Also, since our egoistic human natures continually grow, making it harder
for us to be considerate toward each other, then caring attitudes will
indeed become necessary skills that we will need to learn in order to survive
and prosper healthily as we head into the future.
So as more labor will shift from humans to machines, and more time will
free up, we will need to learn how to get a grip on our growing egos—to
learn how to manage them so that they will not lash out and harm others,
and also to learn how we can develop mutually considerate and positive
relations above our egos.
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cannot currently envision. It will emerge not only from our motions to
connect above the ego that moves in an opposite divisive direction, but our
revamped social connections will surface the force of connection that
dwells in nature, since we would then be more balanced with nature.
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Our universe is a thought. Our world is a thought. We live in thought.
Our perception constantly develops, and the more it transforms, the more
changes we observe in the world.
It is very significant to note that we can control our thinking. Why is that so
significant? It is because by controlling our thoughts, we can create a
certain kind of world to live in.
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Satan is the human egoistic force, i.e. the desire to enjoy at the expense of
others, which comprises the nature of each and every person.
The wisdom of Kabbalah says a lot about this force in books such as the
Torah and The Zohar. For instance, the word “Satan” connects to the same
root as the Hebrew word “Soteh,” which means “deviation,” and “Masit,”
which means “incitement.” It is a force that diverts a person from the
correct path—one of positively connecting to others in mutual love and
bestowal.
This force called “Satan” is rooted in every single person and it is impossible
to rid ourselves of it. The human ego has many different manifestations, but
specifically the one that diverts us from positive connection among each
other is called “Satan.”
In order to become freed from its control over us, we need to actively
engage in our society by building positive connections upon it.
This force will always exist and will constantly generate discord between us.
Yet, when we achieve a positively-unified state, then all the satanic forms
that held us back will be added to our efforts to positively connect and will
then serve to increase the positive force of connection between us.
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When discussing reincarnation, we need to understand that our bodies are
animalistic organisms that live and die as animals. They get born, endure
periods of growth, maturation, death, decay, and then once again retire to
their basic elements.
The soul can be thought of as a field where we are all connected in a single
thought and intention. The soul’s qualities are omnipresent outside the
sights, sounds, smells, touches and tastes that make up our current
perception.
And the most significant aspect about this method is that it is done while
the person is alive in their current body. In other words, Kabbalah explains
how reincarnation works not from a theoretical perspective, but from the
practice of anybody who wishes to implement its methodology.
While alive in our current bodies, we can learn how to rise above them—in
our perception and sensation—in order to discover the soul. Kabbalah is a
practical method that lets any of its students discover such a reality. Those
who progress in their soul’s attainment using the method of Kabbalah
attain knowledge about their reincarnations, not merely theoretically, but as
practical experience of an inner journey to an increasingly expansive reality.
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First, what is the evil eye? In principle, the evil eye is the negative effect of
negative thoughts from other people. Our thoughts indeed play a major
role in our lives, and we are influenced by negative thoughts that others
have about us.
The question then becomes how can we protect ourselves from such
negative thoughts about us, the evil eye?
On this point, several people believe that they can protect themselves by
wearing or using various amulets. But no objects protect us. They can
provide psychological comfort, but they do not change reality. They fail to
stop people’s negative projections onto us.
The way to truly protect ourselves from the evil eye—negative thoughts
from others—is by projecting positive thoughts onto them. By thinking
favorably about others and doing good to them, we project positive forces
toward them, and our projection of positive energy protects us.
We can thus rid ourselves of negative influences and find better luck,
blessing and success in our lives by thinking favorably about others. Doing
so enables us to rise above negative influences, including the evil eye.
In short, think positively about others and you will find a very powerful,
exalted and trustworthy form of spiritual protection.
The third commandment, “You shall not take the name of the Lord, your
God, in vain,” means that we can act with the force of the Creator, i.e. the
force of love and bestowal, only as much as we resemble that force. In
other words, to the extent that we become as loving, caring and giving as
the force of the Creator, which has no intention for self-benefit whatsoever,
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and to the extent that we unite with that force, then only on that condition
can we use it.
The prohibition to use the force of the Creator for self-aimed purposes
equates to the impossibility to do so. That is, it is impossible to draw the
Creator’s influence in order to make ourselves rich, famous and/or powerful
at the expense of others.
Dr. Michael Laitman is a global thinker, kabbalist and scientist who has
dedicated his life to the goal of facilitating a global transition toward a
peaceful and harmonious world. In his relentless pursuit of this objective,
Dr. Laitman has become the world’s most prolific teacher and creator of
media on self, social and spiritual transformation. To date, he has authored
more than 70 books, translated into more than 40 languages. Dr. Laitman
teaches live daily lessons translated into over 30 languages; he has
recorded thousands of shows for the TV and Internet, and has written
thousands of articles and social media posts that have been published daily
in over 40 languages.
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He has appeared and been published in several media and academic
outlets, including The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Bloomberg TV,
The Larry King Show, Fox News Radio, Forbes, The Globe and Mail, The
Jerusalem Post, Ha'aretz, Algemeiner, World Futures (Taylor and Francis),
and many others. He is also a regular opinion columnist at Newsmax and
Israel Hayom, and a blogger at The Times of Israel.
Dr. Laitman is the founder of the ARI Institute and the Bnei Baruch
Kabbalah Education & Research Institute, KabU’s parent organization, and
holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy and Kabbalah, and an MSc in Biocybernetics. He
was also a student and personal assistant of the late Kabbalist Baruch
Shalom HaLevi Ashlag (Rabash) for 12 years.
The topics range widely from direct questions about the wisdom of
Kabbalah, to broader questions about spirituality in general, through to
requests for advice and solutions to issues on personal, social, ecological
and global scales. Moreover, a section dedicated to the coronavirus is
included due to the pandemic’s prominence during most of the time when
Dr. Laitman provided these answers.
Reading this book should provide the reader with a broad perspective of
how the wisdom of Kabbalah holds an all-encompassing solution to the
problems humanity experiences—by diagnosing them at their root, and by
providing wisdom and a method for attracting a new positive force into our
lives that can bring about harmony, peace, balance and happiness to
anybody and everybody.
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