Good Environment – 07.07.11

My Good Environment – Dr. Laitman’s Advice and Principles for the Week

“Spiritual” Practices: The Final Revision

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Egoism shrewdly and inventively depicts various pictures before me. How can I discriminate the lie in them, which appears like love for others? After all, all kinds of religions and methods also talk about love.

Answer: In our world “love for the neighbor” is a simple, primitive game of small egoists. Can you really find real, exalted love for the neighbor anywhere, which is really practiced on an ongoing basis?

True, people create separate settlements in order to live in love with one another: There is a village like that in Italy, one in India, and an entire city in Asia. But if you look a bit closer, you will see that they are still the same egoists who just decided to introduce more comfortable social customs. This is more comfortable and pleasant for them, and therefore, they have united in order to make their lives nicer.

Once upon a time kibbutzes flourished in Israel—agricultural settlements with collective property similar to a collective farm. People decided that it was worthwhile for them to live together because this brought them more benefit. “Let’s give up some of our egoism and then we will feel good.” Everything’s clear about this, but is this really altruism?

Humanity supposes that conceding to the neighbor makes a person an altruist. However, people who are slightly more informed about human nature or who study the science of Kabbalah know that any concession has to come with a profit. No matter what a person is giving up, you can find what he is gaining by that. Even if the profit is concealed, it is definitely present.

For example, I am willing to live in a kibbutz because this removes my worries about how to arrange my life. Is that not a profit? I have no worries. I simply do what I am told. But development follows its course and with time kibbutzes became outdated. As a whole, these kinds of communities have no future.

We already see that all forms of interconnection between people have to change due to the egoism that grows in them. Changes continue to take place, and this inner dynamic has to be realized in some way as there will be an explosion otherwise.

This happened over the course of history to various religions, faiths, and methods. Today they are undergoing a worldwide outburst because man has set out on a search once again. He is conducting the final revision: Can these methods offer anything real?

After this analysis these practices will fall for the last time. After all, today we are checking them in relation to the integral mechanism that nature places before us. We have never had this criterion yet. People are once again turning over the pages of all sorts of practices, confessions, and mystical teachings, trying to understand: Can they help us in the new, integral world?

This process will take a short time and will quickly come to an end with all the expectations crashing down. Everyone will see that it is pointless to wait for help from them. Any subject that is checked will persist for a few years at most after which it will reveal its inadequacy.

After all, if you don’t change man’s nature so he becomes just as integral inside of him as nature itself, then no recipes will help him. The only method that makes man global, integral, and united with others is the method of attracting the Light that reforms, the science of Kabbalah. Every person just needs to be given the opportunity to realize his evil. Then all the means and their combinations will turn out powerless, and this entire business of “spiritual” tricks will end up non-existent.

Man will not be able to calm himself down because the world has changed and the problem is no longer how to calm down, but a “conflict of interests.” No one will be able to survive in the integral system without becoming fit for it.
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/7/11, Matan Torah

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Instructions To The Control Panel Of Life

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn essence, what we study in Kabbalah is the process that we have to go through. The science of Kabbalah explains to us what is the world, why and for what  it exists, and how we exist in it and realize the goal of creation.

Kabbalah points to the part we have to realize ourselves by setting it apart from everything else, which does not depend on us. We have to concentrate all of our forces precisely in the area that depends on us, making this victorious breakthrough and attaining success on the path to the goal.

Therein lies the entire Kabbalistic method: to show man this point, the tiny button among thousands of various buttons and switches that are not connected to anything. It’s like you are standing in front of a huge control panel to the world, but in reality it’s a dummy.

Only one button is connected to the system, and that button is lost among huge switches, bulbs, and color coded panels. Your whole life you press on buttons, click tumblers, tug at levers, shift sliders, spin wheels, and tune dials, but there are no results and you die as if you did not spin anything.

And moreover, all of your efforts accumulate into one tremendous negative charge, which you will still have to correct in the future. After all, egoism grows in every generation.

Therefore, at the end of the day, the science of Kabbalah explains to us where this secret button is found, which cannot be distinguished or recognized among thousands of others. This is precisely the button we must constantly press in order to advance.

Thanks to it, we begin to understand the system, to guess what is happening behind the panel, to surmise how the other buttons are confusing us and why only one of them works. In short, we reach the understanding of who we are, who is on the other side of the mechanism, and how this mechanism operates to connect the Creator with creation and creation with the Creator.

From everything there is in this world, we have to press one button called “love for the neighbor.” Only by means of this button will we be able to activate the system. All other buttons are a bluff, a lie. Together with billions of your contemporaries, you can press, spin, click, and nudge at these counterfeits, just like the past generations did just to pay their last debt in futile attempts.

Therefore, we have to understand how to find this special button and how to press it, how to use our free choice to act correctly, without letting anything go by us. We have to explain this to ourselves and to others so it will become clear to all of us: other actions, which are not connected to pressing this button that commutates (reverses the direction) love for the creatures with love for the Creator, are futile and useless. Moreover, they just increase the minus in our accounts and we will still have to return to them.

If your actions lead toward the goal, they get recorded in your account. Thanks to them, you advance forward, understanding and feeling more. However, if your actions are false, then you will have to become aware of this lie, of your mistake, and the harm you caused in order to correct it and then to keep moving further.

Thus, it turns out that we accumulate a highly undesirable addition, and therefore, we have to be cautious of actions that are inherent to the “correctors of the world.”
All the corrections that we have to carry out, meaning presses on the right button, are called “using the Torah and commandments.” I consist of 613 desires and by pressing on the button, I evoke a certain force that corrects me with its influence, turning my 613 desires into actions of bestowal.

If I restrict the desire, creating a screen and reflected Light above it by correctly interacting for the sake of bestowal, then this desire transforms from a transgression to a commandment. That is how I have to correct all of my desires on all five levels of Aviut of each of them. This is my work, which we have to perform by pressing the right button, meaning by establishing the right connection with the neighbor.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/7/11, Matan Torah

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The Mayan Calendar: 2012 Is Not The End Of The World

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (Alfonso Morales, chief archaeologist for the Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute at Palenque, a specialist in the Maya world): The sensation about the end of the world in 2012, as predicted by the Mayan calendar, lacks a scientific basis. The Maya adhered to the theory of the cyclical, rather than linear, historical process.

The Mayan civilization did not predict the apocalypses in 2012. The Mayas were predicting a “strictly cyclical phenomenon,” not a planetary catastrophe. In the books “Chilam Balam,” which relate the history of the Maya people, prophecies concerning the end of the first era of humanity are mentioned, and it is from those references that certain scholars have drawn their conclusions about “seven alleged predictions.”

These scholars insist that the Mayas were prophesying a series of natural catastrophes that will cause the complete destruction of the planet and the human species along with it.

The predictions, supposed derived from the “Chilam Balam,” claim that “the world of hate and materialism will end and… humanity will have to choose between disappearing as a sentient species that threatens to destroy the planet or evolving toward harmonious integration with the entire universe.”

My comment: Everyone is waiting for change, but there will be no change to the better if man does not begin to change himself to the similarity with the Creator. All other changes are for the worse because they reveal the discrepancy between us and the Creator and do so only in order to compel people to come to the properties of the Creator.
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Is Our World Falling Apart?

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (Lester R. Brown, World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental & Economic Collapse): Can we change direction before we go over the edge? The world is in trouble. Plan A, or business as usual, is not working. Changes must be implemented at wartime speed to avert multiple catastrophes that feed on each other as each one tips the next one over onto a path of no return.

My comment: He wrote about it a few years ago, but in the meantime nobody is listening to him, although he is a famous publicist. Evidently, only shocks will force people to pay attention to it, but will it not be too late—not for the total destruction of civilization, but for reaching complete correction in a peaceful way?
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The Problem Is Who We Forget

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe problem is that we constantly forget about the Creator! It is clear that we work in the group. After all, it is written that everything depends upon it, and only there do we have freedom of will. Only in the group can I do what depends on me.

Dissemination is another way. We understand that if we disseminate widely, we will absorb the aspirations of everyone else and pass desires to one another. But behind all these actions of study, dissemination, and the group, we forget that we only do them to please the Creator. We lose this notion. We do not perceive Him and therefore, it’s as if He doesn’t exist for us.

Sometimes we remember Him and think: “Fine, I will get to this sometime later.” But this is not right as I am no longer aiming straight at the target like an arrow! Even the smallest personal effort must be accompanied by an intention, when “the end result is in its initial thought.” I do everything solely in order to please the Creator, even though I neither know who He is nor feel Him at first.

But as it is written in Psalms, I am always “by night on my bed,” which means that I lie flat in the state when the “head” and the “feet” (all the Sefirot) are on the same level, and there is nothing, neither mind nor sensations; I’m in absolute darkness. And still, I “seek him whom my soul loves.”

And even though I do not know where to look and what this is, I still artificially tune myself into this search over and over again, and I gradually begin to receive some kind of impressions. It begins to work.

We need to attract the Surrounding Light specifically by directing all the actions to giving contentment to the Creator. Otherwise it will be considered that you have started an action but have not completed it. It will not give you the necessary result.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/5/2011, Shamati #5

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A Spiritual Booster

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Zohar describes a state at the level of 125 degrees, the world of Infinity, the world of adhesion, the world of our absolute correction, when we achieve similarity in qualities with the Creator. For this reason, regardless of how distant and opposite we are from this perfect state, lacking any point of contact with it even to the slightest degree, the strength of our pressure turns out to be the greatest specifically in this opposite state to the extent of our efforts to attain perfection. Here the distance actually works to our advantage.

I did not create this opposite state; the One I desire to attain did. For this reason, one gram of effort I exert in order to be with the Creator despite this greatest possible distance is multiplied by 125 degrees. In other words, these degrees benefit me in my efforts.

It’s the same way that everything is done for a baby when she cries. But when a two or three year old cries, the grownups no longer pay as much attention to her.

The maximum distance specifically works in such a way that it multiplies the strength of one’s effort on the other end of the ladder of the degrees. This is why we need to appreciate our state and wish to attain the final state as much as possible. Then our efforts will truly be great.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/5/2011, The Zohar

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The Economy Is A Copy Of Social Relations

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion: (Billionaire investor George Soros, Ekathimerini.com): “We are on the verge of an economic collapse which starts, let’s say, in Greece, but it could easily spread. The financial system remains extremely vulnerable.” Europe is in a crisis, centered around the euro and that the authorities are only engaged in buying time, but that time was working against them.

Europe faces a choice to look for solutions at a national or European level. The survival of the euro is “vital for all.” There must be a European solution.

Over the long term the euro was bound to fail unless a political union was also established. While the eurozone had a common central bank, it had failed to set up a central treasury and had no common fiscal policy. “The euro had created divergence, where it had been expected to create convergence,” he said comparing the levels of competitiveness in Spain and Germany.

My comment: The great financier continues to solve problems using the old methods, but they no longer work. Nothing can be rebuilt without changing social relations; adjustments are not going to work.

For some reason, financiers do not see people behind papers, do not realize that the economy is a copy of social relations and that an economic crisis erupts specifically because they need to be changed. Therefore, financial crisis can be solved by social changes only.
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Two Ranges Of Kabbalistic Broadcast

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe world is gradually being submerged into the global crisis; however, a simple person, the so-called law-abiding citizen, does not feel it. He does not see more than he is being shown at the given time. So, how do we reach them?

The wisdom of Kabbalah delivers results on two levels:

First of all, it is the attainment of the Creator, in the process of which we discover the eternal and perfect force. We merge with it as we reveal it, and in doing so, we save ourselves from the angel of death; we become like the Creator.

As I acquire this similarity, I no longer feel like I pertain to something finite and imperfect. Now, I belong to Him, even if it is only in the way that semen attaches itself to the wall of the womb. Now, I am in Him. Now, I am on a higher degree than this world. I have attained eternity, perfection, harmony, and freedom.

Second of all, in this corporeal life, I receive a method that allows me to escape misfortunes that gradually come closer and manifest in the world. In reality, I greatly depend on others on the level of this world. For this reason, I cannot guarantee that studying Kabbalah will make me feel comfortable. This is because here I exist in a common network that connects everyone.

However, I benefit a great deal on the corporeal level in things like childhood education and my personal attitude toward life. Kabbalah really helps me in the areas where I can personally influence my life, almost independently from others.

In this way, I am provided with advantages that I can feel even during the first years of studying. I can educate my children better, and I understand life better than others. Yet, the key element is my attainment of the Creator. This is “freedom from the angel of death.”

Naturally, it is easier to remain “Shimon from the market,” to sell watermelons, watch soccer at night while drinking beer, and be absolutely blind to anything else. What are the plans, demands, and dreams of such a person? Heaven for him is an infinite number of hamburgers on the grill in front of a huge plasma screen where his team always wins: His eyes on the screen, the hand automatically kindles the flame. We cannot explain anything to a person like this. He is tuned to a different wave length.

Kabbalah “broadcasts” in two ranges: One for those who strive toward the meaning of life and are able to take a new understanding of life from it. The second is also a treasure because a person begins to see the world more deeply and discover the mechanisms that drive it, the connections stretching through it. He sees people’s customs and manners, the nature of the universe, the flow of evolution, and the scale of priorities. You reveal to him our world, the global system, and he begins to understand the principles according to which it operates.

This is a very valuable gift. A person off the street is unable to understand what is happening, but here, he suddenly begins to connect one thing with another, and separate pieces come together into a nice image before him. He reveals the world where he lives and the journey that has brought humanity to the current state.

He did not understand these things until now. He was living behind a curtain: “This is my house, this is my job, my food, and my bedroom.” Now, the person opens his eyes even before he really begins to think about the purpose and the Creator. This is how he becomes a human on the level of this world.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/13/2011, Ramchal’s “The Wisdom Article”

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An Attack Inside The Heart

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Lately it’s felt that the world Kli is working in a single desire. At one time Rabash advised you to make an attack from this state. What exactly are we attacking?

Answer: Ourselves, our heart, our laziness, our pride, our past habits. I have to ascend above all of these calculations.

The most important thing is to dissolve among the friends, to intentionally push yourself into the group. I want to be there all the time. I want to lose my personal mind and feeling and to acquire the mind and feeling of all the friends. It’s as if I lose myself in them by my own desire.

This means acquiring the vessel of the mutual guarantee.
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/6/11, Matan Torah

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