December 22, 2024
August 1, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Quotes
“If we create an environment that has the qualities of bestowal and love, it will be just like a mother.” – Dr. Michael Laitman
Dr. Laitman: In principle, this is what the great commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” talks about. You were instinctively made to feel what a mother is – the safest, kindest place in the world. You might already be a grownup, but you still instinctively aspire to this feeling just like a child.
So make the world be like that!
Dr. Ulianov: People really do long for it. What you are describing sounds wonderful, but it seems unrealistic.
Dr. Laitman: That means we have to think about how to make it happen. Besides, our nature obligates us to achieve this anyhow. The world is now starting to be revealed as an integral, global system. What does that mean? It means that the world is forcing us to treat each other the same as our mothers treated us. Then, together we will acquire precisely this state of being “in the mother’s womb.” Read More »
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May 2, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books
Getting to the Bottom of the “Keeping Up With the Joneses” Phenomenon
We can see just how much we always want what others have in Item 38 of Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag’s “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” stating that “Man [Stage four], who can feel others, becomes needy of everything that others have, …and is thus filled with envy to acquire everything that others have. When he has a hundred, he wants two hundred, thus his needs forever multiply until he wishes to devour all that there is in the whole world.”
But earlier in the introduction (Item 25), Ashlag writes, “Since the Thought [of Creation—the Creator’s goal] was to delight His creatures, He had to create an overwhelmingly exaggerated desire to receive all that bounty, which is in the Thought of Creation [to give us unbounded pleasure].” And he continues, “If the exaggerated will to receive perished from the world, the Thought of Creation would not be realized—meaning the reception of all the great pleasures that He thought to bestow upon His creatures—for the great will to receive and the great pleasure go hand in hand. And to the extent that the desire to receive it diminishes, so diminish the delight and pleasure from receiving.”
Hence, if we want to become Creator-like, we must not diminish our desires. But if we do not diminish our desires, then our ability to eliminate self-centeredness and become Creator- like will fail if all we have in our medicine cabinet are the old remedies of religious fanaticism, oppression, tyranny or any other of the old means of discipline. Those methods were good for “taming” the desire to receive in its earlier stages, but they will not suffice for today’s level of desire to receive.
A new method, a fresh code of action is required, something that will not try to suppress the insuppressible, but will harness the new powers that extreme egoism evokes to improve life, instead of destroying both humankind and our pathogenic egocentricity.
Competition or Cooperation? The Need to Choose Wisely
In Stage Three of the evolution of desires, our envy has created an interconnected and interdependent world where we compete against, yet depend on each other for sustenance. Again we can quote Ashlag, who wrote, “Because each person in the world draws his life’s marrow and his livelihood from all the people in the world, he is coerced to serve and to care for the well-being of the whole world.”
We can also quote McGrew’s statement: “This [single global system] defines a far more complex condition, one in which patterns of human interaction, interconnectedness, and awareness are reconstituting the world as a single social space.” These quotes accurately reflect our situation at the start of the 21st century: we are tied together, and hateful of each other.
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December 4, 2009 at 9:17 am · Filed under Daily Kabbalah Lesson
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlKDTZYRKuE]
(If video is not visible, then watch it here)
Spiritual work is in developing perception through bestowal, above the quality of reception.
Based on the Daily Kabbalah Lesson of 4 December, 2009:
The Daily Kabbalah Lesson is taught by Dr. Michael Laitman, based on authentic Kabbalistic sources, and includes live participation by Kabbalah students and viewers on Kabbalah TV.
The lessons will be continuing daily at 8:10pm until 11pm EST (U.S.), Saturdays through Thursdays, on Kabbalah TV, and are available for free download in the Kabbalah Media Archive.
November 10, 2009 at 8:35 am · Filed under Daily Kabbalah Lesson
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PHgyh-AKB8]
(If video is not visible, then watch it here)
Approaching the language of Kabbalah requires preparing oneself to hear advices on how to bestow.
Based on the Daily Kabbalah Lesson of 10 November, 2009:
The Daily Kabbalah Lesson is taught by Dr. Michael Laitman, based on authentic Kabbalistic sources, and includes live participation by Kabbalah students and viewers on Kabbalah TV.
The lessons will be continuing daily at 8:10pm until 11pm EST (U.S.), Saturdays through Thursdays, on Kabbalah TV, and are available for free download in the Kabbalah Media Archive.
November 4, 2009 at 7:59 am · Filed under Daily Kabbalah Lesson
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb_IRHzMN8E]
(If video is not visible, then watch it here)
How much do you absorb the importance of the Giver, of the quality of bestowal, in all your actions?
Based on the Daily Kabbalah Lesson of 4 November, 2009:
The Daily Kabbalah Lesson is taught by Dr. Michael Laitman, based on authentic Kabbalistic sources, and includes live participation by Kabbalah students and viewers on Kabbalah TV.
The lessons will be continuing daily at 8:10pm until 11pm EST (U.S.), Saturdays through Thursdays, on Kabbalah TV, and are available for free download in the Kabbalah Media Archive.
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