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The force that drives us forward through evolution develops in us a desire to receive. To want more, to acquire, to understand, and to know. This is how we evolve from generation to generation, and year after year, i.e., through the force of reception. We acquire knowledge about our world, integrate into it, and strive to control what happens in it.
Problems begin when there is a lack of balance between a person and their environment. When we constantly take for ourselves without consideration or limitation, we harm others and society. This creates an imbalanced world that lacks the force of bestowal, or in other words, the force of giving, participation, and ultimately, love.
This insight started gaining traction in the 1960s. People began to recognize the limits of egoistic development. They understood that we cannot continue progressing with the desire to receive alone, where everyone sees only themselves and disregards their surroundings. That is, even when we give, it is calculated with an expectation to gain in return.
Simultaneously, a desire awakened to feel nature more deeply, to penetrate the depth of the picture. People came to realize that feeling nature on a deeper level requires qualities that we do not inherently possess.
Apparently, we lack the force of bestowal, a force like Mother Nature’s, i.e., a giving force from which all evolution is born. Just as we act toward our children, so nature acts toward us. And how do we respond? We receive everything from nature and enjoy it, but are we similar to it? Not at all. We are completely opposite.
When we think about ourselves, about the meaning of life, about the process we are undergoing, the question arises: is there a purpose we are meant to reach? It seems that every development in nature has a purpose, so what about us, humanity as a whole? Can we investigate such a question? If we find an answer, we can already begin aligning ourselves accordingly and move toward a truly good life.
There are two fundamental forces in nature: the force of giving and the force of receiving. In our bodies, in the entire universe, everything is forces.
From the beginning of creation, these two forces developed together, interacted in various combinations, and created external forms of matter. Interactions between negative and positive particles, electrons and protons, formed atoms, molecules, and then various compounds in the inanimate level of nature.
Through mutual complementarity, these forces continued to develop and formed living cells. In the plant world, movement already became evident, i.e., the absorption and emission of energy and matter. Later, the combination of forces became more complex, creating the animal kingdom, where individual creatures moved independently, sought food, and strove to survive and reproduce. Moreover, every being adapted itself to changes in its environment.
The giving nature, which is the supportive, supplying, and nurturing force, is more hidden and internal. The receiving nature is more visible to us. In the inanimate, vegetative, and animate worlds, evolution unfolded according to an internal program, and similarly in humanity for hundreds of thousands of years. Today, however, we sense that we have reached a boundary. We have exhausted our development through the force of reception, and progress requires us to add the giving, connecting, and loving force.
How can we do that? Who will teach us?
Until now, we have been used to using the force of reception, which is a force of separation. The more we were each distinct, superior, and dominant over others, the more we were considered successful. Now, we need to evolve, to learn to work with the second force in nature, the force of bestowal. We need to integrate it with the force of reception in order to rise together to a fundamentally new stage of development.
A clear example of the two opposing forces can be seen in our relationships with society, between the individual and society. If we build a society that reflects values of bestowal, connection, and giving, and then study our relationship to others and theirs to us, we will be able to gather data and learn about the force of bestowal that we need to acquire, as opposed to the force of reception.
Gradually, we will learn to use qualities like envy, lust, and honor in a special way that will promote bestowal. This depends on a shift in social values in such a direction. We are social creatures and always want to be seen favorably in the eyes of what society respects. As we develop in such a way, we will see how the force of bestowal becomes the dominant force that will determine all our actions, relationships, thoughts, and intentions that play out among each other.
What will we gain from this? First and foremost, we will gain a safer, healthier, and more economical society, one where everyone cares for everyone like in a healthily-functioning family. This kind of relationship will completely change our lives and improve every field in today’s broken world.
However, beyond that—and this is the crucial point—the more we acquire the force of bestowal, the more we begin to feel and understand nature as our mother. Just like a baby becoming a child, a teen, and then an adult, so too do we, through becoming givers like nature, begin to feel nature’s inner forces, the forces behind matter.
What is the matter we see? If we break it down, we find atoms, then particles, and then forces. Ultimately, there is a force, which is what physicists observe in particle accelerators and other instruments.
Here, we acquire the foundational forces, the force of bestowal and the force of reception, which are at the base of all matter. We enter into matter, into creation, and see how the combination of these two forces builds, composes, and connects everything with wondrous wisdom. We then understand even more deeply, beyond these forces and their actions, the operating program behind them.
Acquiring and balancing these two forces within us leads to knowing nature, Mother Nature, the general force that operates, generates life, and guides it to a goal that we might come to discover.
This helps us understand the life we are now in. We begin to see everything transparently, penetrate everything happening to us, around us, and within us, viewing it all as a combination of forces.
This is not external knowledge like we have acquired so far through reception alone, but the combination of both forces and the new qualities we gain from it gives us internal tools. They are not external tools like those of physicists, chemists, and other scientists, but within us, we feel nature and ourselves as integral parts of it. We begin to see, live, and be included in this grand process.
We also begin to feel ourselves not on the level of solid, bone-and-flesh bodies, or their vegetative and inanimate aspects, but through the forces acting within us and how they synergize with the general, global nature.
When we discover the inner system, our personal forces, the environment’s forces, and nature’s overall forces, we see ourselves as integral parts of this entire system, connected to it. This is how we come to deeply know nature and feel the eternity and perfection within it.
This is, in fact, the purpose of our evolution in this new era we have entered, and in the years to come. We need to simply understand that there is a vast difference between this new life and what took place until now. Throughout history, we progressed instinctively, led by a single force: the desire to receive. It made us look everywhere for how to get more. Now, we need to increasingly develop an approach of consideration, connection, complementarity, and integration within us.
As we develop the force of bestowal, the force of reception also grows, but in a new way, i.e., in contrast to the force of bestowal. Then, these two forces complement each other on a higher level, resulting in creative work. Further human development then takes place through understanding, feeling, attainment, clarification, criticism, and corrections we make in the combination and balance between the two forces. We thus continue to develop from wholeness to even greater wholeness, and beyond.
As a result of this entire process, a new awareness develops of who we are and what system we truly exist in. When we penetrate nature by organizing these two inner forces of reception and bestowal, we begin to feel dimensions that we currently cannot access.
We enter a system of forces that is beyond time, motion, and space, reaching spiritual attainments and inner fulfillment in our emotion and intellect, with no connection to our physical body. Why? It is because everything expands only through attainment, through the new consciousness we acquire. Our body then becomes revealed as merely one aspect of the instinctive and initial forces given to us solely for us to evolve to a higher dimension of experience.
Therefore, we live in a special time, in a unique state, and we are approaching the stage of birthing ourselves as human beings who resemble the vast system of nature. Ahead of us lies a wondrous development in understanding and attainment, to increasingly better lives beyond our current boundaries, to a boundless experience of life.
Based on episode 12 of “New Life” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on January 10, 2012. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
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