Natural disasters have doubled globally in the last two decades. The world is in danger of becoming “an uninhabitable hell for millions of people,” warns the UN, unless actions are taken on climate change—floods, hurricanes, heat waves, earthquakes, fires, and now a pandemic.
Calamities are more intense and more frequent than ever before. What does this acceleration mean? Humans look at nature as a force that is out of balance, which is out of control, but feel it has always been like that since catastrophes have been constantly omnipresent, as if this attitude would make our life easier. It will not work. Nature is precisely pushing humankind to take responsibility and fix the mess it has created once and for all.
More than 7,000 major natural catastrophes were reported between 2000 and 2019, affecting 4 billion people around the globe, according to a recent UN study on the human cost of disasters. That is almost twice the number of calamities registered from 1980-1999, an extraordinary rise mostly due to the climate crisis which threatens our very existence.
We need to understand that all the plagues and increasing suffering appear for one reason: to guide people to find the actual cause of what is happening and tackle the problem at its source, since it’s obvious that the efforts of scientists and politicians are ineffective and have failed to stop the avalanche. Why now the rise of unfortunate natural events? Kabbalists who study the details of the structure of reality provide the answer. Foremost Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag succinctly explains it:
“Nature, like a skillful judge, punishes us according to our development. For we can see that to the extent that humankind develops, the pains and torments surrounding our sustenance and existence also multiply… the right conclusion must be drawn—that nature will ultimately defeat us and we will all be compelled to join hands in following its laws with all the measure required of us.” (The Peace).
Simply put, as the world has evolved to this point, it has now entered a new stage of development, a completely different level in which humanity must fully recognize the unity of nature as a holistic system, one whole.
However, there is a bug in the system, an exception that is the source of the problems. Inside this system stands the human species, the center of the world, who is given the freedom to choose to do as it pleases in spite of the consequences, and who is currently acting as a negative influence in opposition to the trajectory of the rest of nature which is global, integral, and united. Therefore, it is the human who is throwing the system out of balance, transforming its well-oiled operation into a disjointed machine whose pieces are constantly colliding and grinding against each other, a network that needs urgent repair to continue functioning before it falls into total collapse.
If we want to save the planet, and ourselves as a consequence, our task is to rebuild human society to bring human activity in balance with the laws of nature. If we were to see in depth the intricate interconnections of the network of nature, we would realize how we, as the rational element in creation, can and does drastically affect the rest of the parts.
Thus, now comes the time when each of us must look in the mirror and say, “Enough blaming others for my problems; I have to take responsibility.” How can this be done? It can only be done by all of humanity deliberately uniting to achieve equality, interconnection, and mutual understanding. All of our development, where human innovations ripple through and transform the lifestyle of each and every one, demonstrates the extent to which we are interconnected. When we understand this, we will understand the true meaning of balancing ourselves with nature and thus, we will balance nature. We cannot escape from this requirement that we must synchronize with nature.
However, we should not have high hopes for any leader. Each leader ultimately only cares about honor and is inherently selfish, even more so than the rest of us. That is how and why each one of them managed to climb to the top of the political ladder. But once they reach its peak, the nice words promoting the common interest become hollow promises. So we, as the general people, must work together to repair the planet, through our unity, from the wounds we have inflicted and demand from international organizations to advance a global plan for the creation of positive qualitative connections between human beings of all countries, all societies. Only such a protective and luminous ring of light as this surrounding the planet can save it from the impending hailstorm and transform our lives to paradise on Earth, just as was conceived for us in the thought of creation.
