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Hi. My name is George and I’m from Melbourne, Australia.
To love thy neighbor as thyself — does this mean to understand the intentions of my neighbor’s actions in an effort to provide my neighbor with the satisfaction he / she is looking for, even in situations where the satisfaction of my neighbor’s intentions may not be to my personal satisfaction? If so, how is it possible to always understand what others want from us?
Thanks
N/a,
Not exactly. What exactly do we all want? We want pleasure, satisfaction, comfort, delight.
That spark of spiritual pleasure, just a tiny spark, clothes itself in garments of this world, in a coffee, in a football game, in all sorts of dresses by which we feel some moment of delight.
We want to supply the other with endless delight, not just a spark, our goal is to connect to the light and become a pipeline of light to the others, thereby fulfilling their deepest desire, to feel one, love, connected, etc.
This is not for now, but this is the way to think about it.
Seth@KabU
Perhaps the key to loving your neighbor is understanding what it means to love yourself. Self-indulgence is not self-love depending on the indulgence.
If for instance, a woman stayed in a relationship with a husband that cheated on her would that be an indicator of self-love? Â And if she doesn’t love herself … how could she possibly truly love her neighbor?
Leyah,
There are many nuances to all of these things and there is no one size fits all answer.
We should understand that everything that a person does is to satisfy the self. This should become very clear to us, if it is not yet clear we should examine ourselves more seriously.
At this part of our study, we are learning some foundational principals. Later we will learn how to apply them to our lives.
Good luck,
Seth@KabU
At the time of this lesson, my husband is having an affair, it’s an emotional affair and they have been talking for over 2 years everyday and they also met once a month ago. She lives in another country. This is very difficult and I’m trying to love him and her as I would love myself but it’s really really difficult. He still wants to stay married but is still talking to her and is not willing to stop at this time. Are there any articles or any advice relevant to this topic that I could look at? Thank you.
Inbar,
We are focused on giving spiritual direction, not specific family, health or work advice, so I don’t want to get into those areas.
Here are a few blog posts from our teacher, I hope that they are helpful and I hope that you both can find the power to reconcile.https://laitman.com/2022/12/why-are-most-of-the-families-falling-apart-at-present-quora/#gsc.tab=0
https://laitman.com/2015/05/the-family-revolution/#gsc.tab=0
Seth@KabU
Are there any more of those episodes of peace in the world with Giovanni that was presented to keep us busy at the end of the course. Giovanni is awesome and when it was finished, he said it was episode one. Can you send me links to any other episodes? I don’t know how to search with in just the Kabbalah God, Info, YouTube channel and when I try to search YouTube in general, I can’t find anything if you have a link to it I would be greatly appreciated. I really enjoyed like to see more if they exist
Hi Steve,
Here’s the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVz2cfPpsbe6Es_fXTDwZVos3ULxBzGLo
Sometimes I think the issue with loving your neighbor as yourself, is that it appears so many people do not love themselves. If they would they would not do such destructive things to themselves, their families and even friends. My father always told me look at how a person treats their mother, and that is how they will treat you. My question then, is has egoism actually killed love for ourselves?
Maria,
Let’s look at this like this, when you get up in the morning, whose teeth do you brush? Whose problems do you think about? Who do you make coffee for? When you go to work to earn a living to pay bills, whose bills are you paying? When you are driving and thinking about life, whose life are you thinking about. When you plan to watch a show, whose preference do you consider when you sit to watch something?
In short, all day long, all we do we do for ourselves. That’s it.
Now, if you have destructive habits that you acquired by being around a negative environment with negative influences, so then you need to move yourself to a constructive, supportive environment (you definelty found one here). But don’t confuse having bad habits with being totally self-loving. Everyone does everything for themselves, and if they do for someone else it is only because there is a calculation that by doing for the other it is better for me.
Egoism is defined as love for ourselves.
Seth@KabU
I understand the theory, but the practice doesn’t seem easy, even internally. How do you love a person who doesn’t love you?
Esther,
You are right. Â It is impossible.
We are built as a will to receive and we only act where we calculate that we will benefit.
So it takes an external force that operates on us, it is called generally the light that reforms, we will learn about it later.
It is not hocus pocus, you can see a similar phenomenon in our world.  Remember when you were  a young girl in school and your first love, your first crush.  You were in school and you never paid attention to boys and then one day all of a sudden your heart flutters and when you look at one special boy.  It’s not sexual, there is not touch, nothing, there doesn’t need to ever be, but a moment before those feelings didn’t exist, and then something happens and you have a whole new set of feelings.
So this is an example from our material world.  Something similar happens in spiritually, however, the first example comes naturally. Our work and spiritual love comes from what we build together and that is what we learn how to do here together.You’ll see that this whole work is for us to become like the Creator.  As He is merciful, we too will be merciful.  We become love and bestowal like He is.  It means I’m not only loving someone who does me a favor, but I become unconditionally loving.  How?  Well, that is what I explained above and we will do this together step by step.
Seth@KabU
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