Good Environment – 10.05.11

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

Thoughts On Shamati, “What Is ‘My Friend Is Concealed’ In The Work?”

Dr. Michael LaitmanWhat is meant by “my friend is concealed”? Sometimes I feel that a pleasant, wonderful sensation, understanding, or fulfillment that was present in me moves away, cools, and disappears. These levels of separation are called Nekudot – points. There are Taamim – tastes, which are felt during the Light’s exit, and there are Nekudot – points, impressions from the Light’s exit. Nekudot are precisely the place from which new vessels or desires form. We study this in Preface to the Science of Kabbalah and in Talmud Eser Sefirot.

We have to see this gradual disappearance of Light as the creation of new vessels/desires, like in a flirt or game. This separation, the sensation that the Light seems to leave you, is an invitation to pursue it, to show that you really desire it, that you won’t let it leave you. Even if it moves away or grows weaker, you desire to be merged with it in the impending darkness.

Through these games the Creator builds an attitude to Him within us that is independent from our will to enjoy. He moves away, but I am willing to be with Him in any case. He dwindles, but I still want to remain in this darkness. That is, these games are not played in relation to me, but in relation to my will to enjoy, my ego. And above my ego I wish to be merged with the Creator in spite of feeling darkness in my ego.

This is my ego, this is me—above it, and across from me there is Light. And I am willing for the ego to feel darkness and emptiness. This does not matter to me.

Shamati - What is My Friend Is Concealed

Most importantly, I know that in spite of my negative desire, the total absence of fulfillment in my ego, I want to be connected with the Light precisely in these situations. This means I am “above reason,” already in bestowal. Therefore, the Light’s separation builds desires for spirituality within me.
From the 6th lesson at the Toronto Convention 09/19/11
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Dutch PM Calls For Europe Budget Tsar

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (From The Financial Times): “The European Union should appoint a new budget tsar with powers to dictate taxes and spending in eurozone countries and who could ultimately adjudicate whether countries should be kicked out of the euro.

“Writing in the Financial Times, Mark Rutte and his government’s finance minister, Jan Kees de Jager, said the new ‘commissioner for budgetary discipline’ should be given the authority to impose a gradually more painful series of penalties on profligate eurozone countries, including the withholding of EU development funds.

“But if a country continues to flout EU demands for spending restraint, Mr. Rutte’s plan would force eurozone countries to submit their budgets to the commissioner, who could veto it before it is presented to parliament.

“‘Countries that do not want to submit to this regime can choose to leave the eurozone,’ Mr. Rutte and Mr. de Jager write. ‘In the future, the ultimate sanction can be to force countries to leave the euro.’”

My Comment: Is not it better to choose the CreatorNature as the Tsar, to study it and observe its laws?
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Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion: (Charles Plosser, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia): “Monetary policy has little ability to help the U.S. jobs market in current economic circumstances, a top Federal Reserve official said Thursday.

“‘I am really doubtful that monetary policy is a tool that is going to help us very much’ to help spur demand and improve hiring in an economy where many households and companies are still looking to cut borrowing levels, rather than to increase them.”

My Comment: Until a person becomes convinced that he cannot solve the problem in any way, he does not admit to others and to himself that he has lost. But if this is the case, isn’t it the role of those next to him to stop him?
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The World Needs A Global Strategy Against Chaos

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion: (Sergei Martynov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Belarus): “There is a pervasive feeling that chaos is inexorably engulfing the planet. Indeed, one global crisis comes hard on the heels of another. International law is being shamelessly trampled. Inequality and poverty are on the rise, and above all, an ever increasing number of people in the world are exposed to suffering.

“The situation is bound to persist, unless together we arrive at a set of long-term efficient measures. We need a global strategy against chaos.

“International failures over the past twenty years suggest that for such a strategy to become a success, it would have to be built around the following three foundations: strengthening international law, establishing global partnerships, and revitalizing the United Nations.”

My Comment: The leaders already see this from experience, from their lack of control over society, their nations, and the world.
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The Future Of Government

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion: (Ian Pearson, futurist): “[Government’s] responsibilities will remain, but all of them will be subject to change brought about by new technologies.

“Governments have traditionally had sharp teeth to enforce their decisions, but the spread of the Internet and social networking tools has removed some of the significance of geography, and given new power to individual citizens. Governments are discovering everywhere that they are becoming more accountable, whether they like it or not. Their limited jurisdiction is also becoming obvious.

“However, we will still have geographic government, and communication between government and citizen may improve. …But if they genuinely do care what we think other than election time, I believe we could go further to make a more responsive democracy. If we wanted, we could allow each citizen to have their preferences on important issues stored in a database, an electronic shadow, suitably anonymous to everyone else of course. Government would then know all the time what the electorate want. Referenda could be instant… Democracy is very much a compromise kind of government and it wouldn’t be good to take it too far in terms of letting everyone decide everything.

“But it is certain that government will change a lot. We will be forced into more global cooperation for a range of things. …Maybe there won’t be a full world government, but maybe also we will see a jigsaw being built of all of these different pieces, and if we assemble them correctly, there is yet some potential benefit.”

My Comment: Society develops under objective laws of nature, just like any other population, so we don’t have to guess—nature has a precise and specific plan to bring us to a unified global integral system of relationships. The Internet will become one of the decisive tools in this development. Certainly, gradual change of the economy of the transition period to the economy of a new world will form the basis of all changes.
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The Teacher Is A Spiritual System

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What is cancellation before the teacher?

Answer: It is cancellation relative to what the teacher explains, the message that he conveys. You may be able to discover this in a book, but he conveys this to you in a more lively manner. Theoretically, you can study without a teacher, but this is extremely difficult. You still have to awaken the soul that precedes you in the hierarchy, but if it is not next to you in some material embodiment, this is much more difficult.

The teacher is a whole system, rather than a “person.” This is a system that transmits the method, teaching, the Light to you, produces difficulties and problems in you, and works on you and your friends. This is the job of a guide who cares about the group and awakens in them desires and spiritual needs, who confuses and thus stimulates them to come to the solution sooner. But he should not rob them of the freedom of choice and turn them into blind admirers or hasidim; this is the most important.

The teacher should reveal himself before you and present himself in a way that you would not obey him fully and disappear before him. He should leave you room for your own efforts, keeping you in constant doubts about him, in the feeling of rejection, disregard, and darkness. Otherwise, it would be just worship, and you will not have a request to the Creator.

The teacher opens you to knowledge, but does not reveal himself. He shows you just the opposite to give you the opportunity to ask the Creator.
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/2/2011Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Acceleration Above Reason

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe are required to always accelerate time since a constant speed does not count in spirituality. What matters is an addition to the usual speed, acceleration that constantly increases the speed. From this we have to draw a conclusion on how we are required to act.

Baal HaSulam explains that this addition to the usual actions is called faith above reason. One cannot make this addition by his own, human effort. However, we are trying to reach it, and therefore, we cry out to the upper one, and our scream draws the Light that Reforms upon us.

This Light doesn’t just come when you are doing something. It comes when you open for it a new, empty place—and then it appears! Another empty place, and once again the Light appears. However, if everything remains the same way, as usual, then there is no reason for the Light to come since it already did its work and performed some action within you.

Therefore, we constantly have to add within ourselves new empty and dark voids in order to ask only for the force that will allow us to work as if we were full of Light.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/2/2011, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Crisis Is The Birth Of Something New

Dr. Michael LaitmanWhen we read The Book of Zohar, we have to imagine the network of all the people in the world and how this upper system is revealed. Then we will understand that Aba and Ima, YESHSUT and ZON that The Zohar describes are the types of connections between us.

We are in a system that ties us to one another. In the ties among us there are ten Sefirot. Ten Sefirot is a whole world: Zeir Anpin and Malchut are ZON, Hochma and Bina are the upper Aba ve Ima and YESHSHUT (Israel Saba ve Tvuna), Keter is Atik and Arich Anpin, half of the upper one and half of the lower one.

We can divide the connection between us into five worlds or five Sefirot: Keter, Hochma, Bina, Zeir Anpin, Malchut, or into ZON, Aba ve Ima, and Keter, and so on. We learn about this whole structure in the world of Atzilut.

A Crisis Is The Birth Of Something New

If I become similar to you, by this I actually have to correct myself in all these relationships. Of course, it is only to a certain extent and not at the level of Gmar Tikkun (the end of correction). As I do that I get closer to you.

There are 125 degrees between one person and another. When each one attains his friend to the fullest, he attains the whole system because the individual and the general are equal. This is how we advance.

The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches us about what is among us; not about ourselves, but about the strings that tie us together, the types of connections among us. This is the main thing. This is why, for example, we study what the beginning of a month (Rosh Hodesh) is, and what the beginning of the week, the end of the week, Sabbath, or the holidays are. These are different forms of connection that exist in this network, according to special actions that take place in this system.

The network works according to its aim. Each of us is the desire to receive. This desire is nothing, a dummy, the still level of the still—the dust from which everything was created.

The system awakens the dust and gradually revives it, and then we—the blocks of raw matter—begin to develop. This system alone develops, strengthens, and maintains everything. There is nothing besides it. We live in this system.

Therefore, it says that the upper Light that dwells in this system revives the whole world. It awakens us in two ways. On one hand, it stirs in us the deficiency to connect with others since otherwise we don’t receive enough vitality. After all, our vitality depends on our inclusion into the system in which different exchange processes take place, just like in our body, in the circulatory, lymphatic, nervous, and other systems.

Life is the connection between the elements, the exit and the entrance of energy, metabolism. In the network of connections among us the exchange is on the level of our desires.

Therefore, we should imagine how we can awaken the system by ourselves, not waiting for it to wake us up “in its time (Beito),” according to the plan,which usually has unpleasant effects on us.

If we can awaken the system, we will feel it as pleasant because while it awakens, we will begin to understand it, to agree with it, to agree with the idea that we have to bestow, to be tied to one another, to be incorporated in this system. The general law of the system is the law of mutual guarantee, the absolute mutual connection among all the parts. This is the law of a healthy body that is in harmony, in a perfect global, integral connection.

This is why we read The Book of Zohar, that speaks about this system. Kabbalists don’t tell us anything else but that. There is nothing other than that to speak about. Our world is an opposite copy of this system, a totally corrupt copy. This means that the ties seem to exist, but we don’t see them, we don’t study them correctly and don’t know how to use them. Everything is the other way around.

The crisis that is revealed today is actually the revelation of the network among us. In Greek, for example, the word crisis means a turning point, meaning correction and not corruption. And it is indeed a correction.

In Hebrew, the word “crisis” (Mashber) also refers to “birth stones,” a special place where women in labor used to sit on in the past. RASHI wrote about it in his commentary to the Torah (Exodus 1, 16).

So let’s read The Book of Zohar and hope that the network between us will be revealed.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/2/2011, The Zohar

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Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Is the understanding that we are part of the general integral system and should make every effort to take care of it considered the first step into the spiritual world?

Answer: Yes, it is. As much as possible, we should disseminate the knowledge of it and the inner basis, the support for this view. In other words, working with people, we employ two channels: on the one side, studies and information, and on the other, education and upbringing.

A person should know the system in which he or she exists. Similarly, children should be taught about the laws of the country and the work of various government agencies. The most important thing for a child is to understand in what world he lives. Thus, humanity should be collectively taught integral laws, to bring it closer to the real case.

Then people will understand the principle of the global system in which we find ourselves and will be able to accept the new principles that we should adopt. Their implementation should be desirable to me so that I happily agree to the impact of the environment that will “operate” on me. I am ready for anesthesia in order to wake up refreshed again and again. Time after time, I will discover the new forces of bestowal in me, and thus, I will be included in the integral world.

Alone, I am not capable of anything. The only thing that I can do is to want to be cured, like a patient who is admitted to a hospital to be healed. He doesn’t know the healing process, and everything else except for his consent doesn’t depend on him. So, I turn to the environment to help me, ready to trust it: “Produce changes in me.”

In principle, this is my job. It is not difficult. I need only not to waste myself on those areas in which I will not succeed on my own. There is no need to enter the system, where strict laws act. I have no chance to learn its gears. Only one thing is required of me: to want and to give the environment an opportunity to bring me into motion so that my gear starts turning as necessary. More precisely, my mind and feelings should coincide with its rotation because it turns correctly. I only reveal what is already there.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/2/2011, “Peace in the World”

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