Summer is here! After feeling isolated during the long winter months, summer is a season that brings us a renewed connection with each other and Nature. Summer is a season for picnics! Picnics come in all shapes and sizes, from small gatherings around a picnic basket filled with goodies to huge community and public events. Yet, no matter the size of the picnic, one thing is always the same; yes, I mean ants! A picnic is what educators refer to as a positive place experience, a special opportunity to explore and connect to each other and to Nature. Is this why picnics are so popular? Would it be a picnic without ants?

When we explore Nature, we discover that the inanimate, vegetative, and animate levels of Nature are all driven by instinct. Ants are a great example of this; ants are social insects that live and work together in harmony. Ants work together in colonies to care, feed and educate younger ants, to carry out social planning, garbage disposal, engineering, farming, cultivating, and foraging - food from our picnics! Watching ants, we discover that somehow, their actions seem to follow a general force that operates and sustains this level of nature in harmony. What is this force? And what can we learn from it?

The Single Force

"This is an altruistic force that impels all parts of Nature to exist as organs in a single body, in balance, and in harmony."

Michael Laitman PhD, "From Chaos to Harmony"

The wisdom of Kabbalah explains that the single force of Nature aspires to bring everything into balance. To maintain this balance, everything in Nature operates as part of a single interconnected, comprehensive system. It is easy to see this in the ant colony. An ant separated from the colony would not survive for long. It is not meant to exist as an individual. Instead, each ant fulfills a specific role in the colony. With each ant’s contribution, the colony stays strong and, as a whole, the ants in it prosper.

In a similar way, all other parts of Nature operate under an altruistic code: take only what is necessary for survival, and everything else is for the benefit of the system. This is not a conscious choice by plants and animals, but is an inherent part of their nature. Individual animals might appear to act only in self interest, but close examination shows that in doing so, they help strengthen the entire system.

Man is the only part of creation that operates outside of this interconnected system. We operate under an egoistic code: how can I get the most amount of pleasure for the least amount of effort? This is the opposite of the single force of Nature that the Kabbalists tell us about. This is why almost everything we do seems to upset the balance of Nature. Nature, however, seeks to bring humanity into balance. The Kabbalists tell us that this is the source of all the sufferings we see around us.

Until we become similar to Nature’s single force of altruism, we will continue to experience this force as a negative impact on us. Everything exists and occurs for humanity, to help us form the right connection between ourselves and acquire Nature’s quality of altruism. If we want to stop feeling the altruistic force of Nature as a blow against us, we must recognize our own egoistic Nature and learn the method of correcting it.

Would it be a picnic without ants? Picnics are a positive place experience to recognize our opposition to the altruistic force of Nature. Perhaps this is why a picnic is defined both as a meal taken outdoors to be eaten and as a pleasant experience. The Kabbalists tell us that we can begin our process of assuming Nature’s qualities of altruism by imitating Nature. By imitating Nature’s qualities of loving and giving, making an effort to care for others, and bonding with them with the recognition that all are part of a single body, we will begin to feel that there is wholeness in Nature’s quality. Through our efforts in imitating Nature, we will discover that an altruistic attitude towards others is a source of perfect unbounded pleasure, and this will lead us to want to reach this level of altruism in our inner qualities.

"In this manner, we will rise from the level we were created in, to a higher level, the level of Nature’s force itself. We will be integrated in its harmony and perfection. This is where Nature’s evolutionary law is leading humanity." – From Chaos to Harmony