Money Matters

The text below is a summary of Dr. Laitman’s words in the show El Mundo (The World).

It is said that money is not everything in life. That may be true, but it can buy just about anything. Our desires are generally divided into six categories: food, sex, family, money, power, knowledge. Money, the fourth category, can acquire all other five. In other words, money is power; it is an equivalent that can be traded for anything we want or need. This is why in Hebrew, the word kesef (money) means two things: kisuf (wanting/yearning) and kisui (cover). In other words, money can cover (satisfy) all our wants.

Money is power; it is an equivalent that can be traded for anything we want or need. This is why in Hebrew, the word kesef (money) means two things: kisuf (wanting/yearning) and kisui (cover). In other words, money can cover (satisfy) all our wants.

The more civilization develops, the more it develops its monetary systems. We have become completely dependent on it because we cannot barter products the way our ancestors did, so we have to use something that is equivalent in value to the products we want to trade, something that is portable, collectible, and valued equally throughout the world. The thing that meets all these requirements is money.

The only thing that can replace money is love, since love drives us to give and receive fairly and justly. Regrettably, love does not exist in human society, except between parents and children, although today even this is not a given. In any case, as a factor in today’s society, which is based on mistrust, the only practical means of exchange is money.

However, for an increasingly growing number of people, there is something that is worth more than money, despite all that it can buy. These people are searching for something money truly cannot buy. Money can buy anything in life, but it cannot explain the meaning of life itself, life’s purpose!

Usually, when we are younger, we focus more on making money, thinking that this is what will make us happy and feel secure. As we mature and reach our late 30s or 40s, we realize that we may have made enough money to secure our living, more or less, but we do not know why we live at all. “OK, so I was born, I’ve lived thus far, and I have children who will live after me. But now I am looking at several more decades of life, where I’ll be going through the motions without understanding what it is all for.”

Think of everything we do in life; we always know what we want to get out of it. So how can we carry on with life itself without knowing why we are here? No amount of money can answer this question, which is why most people are even afraid to admit to themselves that they are asking it.

My personal take—as someone who is occupied much more with the meaning of life than with financing ephemeral satisfactions—is that money should cover our basic needs. We should have enough of it to secure health, housing, education, and food for ourselves and our families. Beyond these basic needs, I get no pleasure out of hoarding cash; I prefer to spend my time developing the higher realms of life, the ones that deal with life’s purpose, and not with securing my physical existence.

There is another point here: People who chase money and other corporeal pleasures are never truly satisfied. If they settle for what they have, it is only because they are too tired or timid to strive for more, but it is not as if they would not want more. Such people can never be satisfied because the very satisfaction of their desires causes them to grow. Because the sensation of vitality comes from satisfying our desires, once they are satisfied, we no longer feel alive because there are no desires to satisfy. As a result, new and more intense desires emerge in us.

On the other hand, a person who strives to know the purpose of life is always satisfied because he does not need to achieve something in order to feel happy. The search itself makes him feel alive and energetic. He, too, will want to learn more once he has learned something, but knowing is not his purpose, but the learning itself, making him constantly satisfied and deficient at the same time.

For such people, money matters do not matter. All that matters is to learn and explore the world they live in, how it works, why it works, and how they can make it work better.

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Why Are More and More Families Falling Apart Today?

More and more families are falling apart today because people cannot tolerate the limitations that families impose.

More and more families are falling apart today because people cannot tolerate the limitations that families impose.

In order to tolerate the limitations imposed by families, there are a few variables, one of which is necessity: that the family unit is given to us by nature. That is, if we understand that living as part of a family framework, we can achieve the perfect and eternal state of being that nature is guiding us all toward, then we would gain strength to go through any situations that arise in the family.

We can thus relate to the family as a laboratory of sorts, in which we can work on becoming our higher selves. That is, the family unit is the greatest opportunity for us to reach a state where we positively connect to each other in ties of mutual love and bestowal. However, this can work on condition that we approach the family in a very particular way, which is correct for spiritual progress. We are not yet ready for such an approach in our present time, which is why I also do not discuss it in the lessons I give on a daily basis. But the time will come when it will happen.

In addition to acknowledging the nature-given necessity of the family unit, there should be a clear distribution of responsibilities, opportunities and reciprocal fulfillment in which children also play a significant role, as they partake in the relationship between husband and wife according to their age, and also they will most likely develop to having their own children, grandchildren, and so on. Moreover, if we are discussing a family that is in tune with the ideal natural state, then we also need to discuss three generations that share regular contact, i.e. where children regularly see and feel their grandmothers, grandfathers and their parents. I have elaborated on the merits of a three-generational family in other places.

Nature is gradually leading us to a state where we will have to act in our families in a way that is balanced with nature, and our world will be unable to exist without the family unit that is set up in such a way.

Nature is gradually leading us to a state where we will have to act in our families in a way that is balanced with nature, and our world will be unable to exist without the family unit that is set up in such a way. So between the ideal family that nature will press us to realize and our current state of more and more families that are breaking apart, we are in for some tough years ahead.

However, it is still very risky to discuss these variables because it seems as if we load the heaviest responsibilities upon ourselves. When we see the inner essence of whom we are with, and that the years we spend together and the external appearance mean nothing, because everything is determined only according to their inner state, then we find that we can build an extraordinary new spiritual world of love and bestowal. We would not see the appearance and the habits of our partners as we see them today, but we would enjoy a continuous renewal within and among all of us. In short, we would change all the time, and would perceive a different world from one moment to the next.

Based on the video “Why Are More and More Families Falling Apart Today?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Semion Vinokur. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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What Can We Learn from the Universe?

The universe once had compressed into a single point, exploded into what we know as “the Big Bang,” and its parts dispersed omnidirectionally until they settled in a place of balance among the forces acting on them.

Nature in general draws to such a balance. We are currently within this process of expansion, away from a center of connection. Some scientists say that this process needs to end and another process will unfold, either of connection or at least a return to some new form of balance. Indeed, we can influence the celestial bodies to make a return to their center, and we will see the extent to which we influence the myriad galaxies, stars and planets so that they become as one entity.

We can influence the celestial bodies to make a return to their center, and we will see the extent to which we influence the myriad galaxies, stars and planets so that they become as one entity.

How can we influence the universe? First, we need to understand that the universe is a single desire. The process of dispersion and connection parallels the spiritual process of how we once experienced our complete connection as a single desire, a state which in the wisdom of Kabbalah is called “the soul of Adam HaRishon.” This desire shattered into an enormous amount of parts. In every one of us there is a small part of that general desire or soul. In Hebrew, the word for “human beings” is “Bnei Adam” (“the sons of Adam”) since we emerged from that initial soul, and according to Kabbalah, the purpose of our lives is to reconnect our distant, broken and dispersed desires back to that single desire or soul. By relating our many desires to a single final goal where a higher force binds them all together as one, we then start seeing how all parts of the universe draw closer together in a single complementarity and wholeness. And when we reach that final whole state, we attain a sensation of perfection and eternity.

About the eternal sensation that we attain at the end of our development, we can also learn from the universe about how we live in an infinite space. We see such phenomena in astronomy where we thought of a certain space in the universe as empty, and then we developed more advanced tools and discovered that what we previously saw as an empty space actually consists of more distant galaxies. In other words, the universe shows us a physical example of infinity, which parallels the spiritual state of eternity that exists when we connect our myriad desires back to a single desire.

Based on the Daily Kabbalah Lesson with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on Wednesday, December 14, 2022. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.