The universe is constantly providing us with opportunities to develop in a more efficient and beneficial way. Most of humanity ignores those opportunities.
The people in our HumansFirst meetings are just the opposite. They are very interested in exploring how to advance here in a smarter way, and spend most of their time and energy helping others feel okay about the necessary changes up ahead.
“The universe sends us adversity that forces us to change. Otherwise the ego would not budge.” Michael Laitman
Unlike others who are just letting life wash over them, my HumansFirst friends are actively working against the wave of apathy our society seems to be gripped in. We have all chosen to invest our time in participating in these meetings that are mainly about connecting simply for the sake of connecting.
Since I firmly believe that humanity will eventually discover this to be the solution to all our problems. I fully support this growing movement. This is why I have spent every Saturday morning for the last 6 months documenting this incredible example of human connection.
In our calls we are all completely equal — and equally important. We all listen attentively when someone is speaking and try to add something positive to the conversation. Since we’re essentially researching our humanity, we don’t judge others. Everything is used for the good of our learning process. It’s an experiment we’ve all agreed to participate in together.
And this is a global connection we are activating, with a very diverse group of people from all over the world.
The topic of yesterday’s call was: How we recover from face plants and failures. And what to do when you blow it big.
We all know there are certain situations that are going to trigger the worst side of us. That’s why this discussion about failure very quickly became a discussion about how we keep getting the same situations sent to us over and over again, until we figure out the lesson.
We can view these incidents as negative — or as new growth opportunities that the universe went to a lot of trouble to design specially for us. But how evolved do we need to be to see the latter? It definitely doesn’t come naturally.
The universe sends us adversity that forces us to change. Otherwise the ego would not budge. I hate to bring this up here today — but this is perfectly observed in the history of Jewish people. More specifically — in my personal history as a Jew.
Timeline of My Life as a Jew (and the lessons that came with it)
- I am the granddaughter of a famous Jewish/German photographer on my father’s side, who fled Germany before the second world war.
- My mother’s parents (Yisrael & Sarah) were farmers who had to leave Poland because of the persecution of the Jews in that country.
- I grew up in a suburb of Montreal called Rosemere, where the 10 Jewish families used to meet a few times a year.
- In grade 1 I was placed in a French school near my father’s business. During the morning prayer I was allowed to skip kissing the Christian bible with a huge cross on it.
- I remember getting slapped across the face by an older French girl once in a parking lot — for no other reason except being a Jew. (Juif! she screamed at me).
- In grade 2, I was put in private Jewish school to encourage my big brother to study for his Bar Mitzva. I had to learn Hebrew quickly to catch up with the rest of the class.
- My private Jewish school often received threats in the form of bomb-scares, which was a perfectly normal occurrence in the ‘70’s. The principal would make an announcement and our parents had to come pick us up.
- A few years later when the cultural war between the French and English speakers escalated and all the rich Jews moved to Toronto, we moved to Israel.
- I loved living in Israel and was very thankful to have ended up here. But the lessons kept coming, so clearly it wasn’t enough to simply reside in the land of the Jews. The universe had bigger plans for me.
- Losing two of my sisters in the same year was an enormous wake up call on the largest possible scale. It would take me many years to discover what it was all about, but I eventually discovered the wisdom of Kabbalah and everything started to make sense.
- I learned that the Jews have a special role in the world. That we really are different from all other nations. It’s not enough for Jewish people to go to synagogue once a year and have Jewish friends to hang out with — we are supposed to help the rest of the world get along.
- Authentic Kabbalah is about how to strengthen our human connection. And mainly for the Jews to unite, and present an example to the rest of the world. Knowing this is not enough — it is our duty to spread this knowledge and the method with the rest of the world.
Under normal circumstances, I would not bring up the subject of anti-Semitism in this sacred place where we come together as like-hearted individuals who are focused on uplifting humanity. But this subject has gotten too big to ignore. You may think this modern persecution of the Jews is something that has nothing to do with you — but you would be wrong. We are living in a time where fascist, right-wing, white-supremacist groups are on the rise throughout Europe, and also in America. This is typical of times of great transition where there is confusion about the way forward. Everyone subconsciously feels the Jews are to blame. And that is not far from the truth.
The Jews, who are made up of the 70 nations of the world, are meant to be providing the world with an example of unity. We are meant to be providing the method of connection that would allow everyone in the world to rise slightly above their differences, and get along together here in harmony. As long as we are not providing the world with the key to our happiness, division, bi-partisanship, hate and a growing lack of trust between humans will continue to eat away at the foundation of human society as we know it.
Why am I dredging all this up here? What’s the connection between this subject of learning a lesson and the Holocaust? Between my family’s history and the repetitive history of the Jews? In Kabbalah we study from the sources left to us by the last greatest living Kabbalist — Baal HaSulam. Our teacher Michael Laitman studied under his son the Rabash. Baal HaSulam went to Poland before the Holocaust and warned the Jews of the approaching danger. He urged them to come back to Israel with him. They refused. Now again we are living in a time with very similar conditions. I am part of a team sharing Michael Laitman’s message about the impending danger with the Jews, and the world at large.
This is why I will continue to promote how good human connection is the key to our better future — for every individual, and for all of society as a collective. This is my motivation for joining these HumansFirst calls and why I’m so passionate about what we do here together. Failure is not an option.