We should not be concerned with the right way to express our request—if it arises inside the heart, it will be heard. No extra actions are needed to transfer it and send it somewhere. The correct request in the heart already turns into a common prayer, and is an action on its own.

The correct desire, the vessel, is the main thing. It is the actual prayer. To pray means to “judge yourself, evaluate whether your desire is correct. And the correct desire includes all the components: the depth of the vessel, its covering for the sake of bestowal, and the prayer. Man on his own begins to feel what he is lacking for it to become a common prayer—otherwise, it will not be a desire to bestow.

A desire must contain the feeling of the greatness of the goal, the greatness of the Creator, one’s own nothingness, and the greatness of the group. When all the necessary elements connect together, it is called the full measure (Seah)—the cup, where we receive fulfillment.

The deeper man goes into his desire—the better he sees the elements he is lacking. And all this he finds in the group.

There is no other fulfillment but desire, and the fulfillment always corresponds to the desire, and it depends on whether this desire is organized the right way. This is because the desire is the form of fulfillment, and fulfillment does not have a form when outside the vessel.

As soon as our aspiration to bestow reaches the minimal measure—we immediately ascend to the first spiritual degree. Thus we advance until we reach an absolute desire in this discrete, digital form, a portion at a time. This is our entire correction—correction our desires. [Read more →]

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Everything in our world is built on the confrontation of two opposing forces. Any of our interactions is based on the predominance of one factor over the other; any success is achieved at the expense of something.

How can we establish correct relationships between us? Today, the only solution is concessions. I would like to take over the world, but I am bound: “Take only what is no more than 10 cm from you.” Everyone is limited in a similar way, but we are unable to comply with these rules, and that is why we have been fighting from time immemorial, or using other methods to prevail over each other. Every time, envy, passion, and ambition pull us out of the current into a more comfortable state.

However, today we are all interconnected. No one can withdraw from others or switch to self-sufficiency. Current conditions do not allow us to reach even minimal self-sufficiency. I involuntarily depend on others to such an extent that they penetrate my mind and feelings. Our ties are stretched everywhere, and they define all my life.

Previously, people felt free after work and not burdened by a total network of mutual influence. But today, we are all linked by one chain, and that is why the two opposite forces, acting in everyone, are also interconnected globally. I would cope or come to terms with my own problems, but in this age, this is impossible: I depend on others so much, that their impact breaks me to pieces, throws me in all directions at once.

So, we need a new methodology that allows each person to live a peaceful life, and us altogether to live in a new way, to unite correctly. [Read more →]

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Opinion: (Andrey Milovzorov, from utro.ru): “Saxo Bank predicts that wheat prices will double in 2012. But what will change in the lives of European or Russian consumers if a loaf of bread costs twice as much? Nothing. The average European spends on food 20% of his income, and the average Russian 50%.

“However, there are countries where people spend 90% of their earnings on food. In Somalia, a quarter of a million people could die because of a severe drought. No one hurries to help because it is a market for western farmers.

“Large-scale deliveries of food aid feed a huge army of stock market speculators. The market is not interested in developing agriculture in the starving countries.

“It seems that to change the logic of the markets, we need more serious arguments than a rise of the price of bread in Europe. For example, a mass exodus of refugees from Africa to Europe, who are fleeing from hunger (there may be up to 150 million of them), or food riots that could affect the entire world trade and cut off oil supply to the West.”

My Comment: Mass famine will have unpredictable consequences, and mainly they will force the world to reconsider its disdain for their neighbors and take care of mutual guarantee.
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Opinion: (Olivier Blanchard, the IMF Chief Economist): “We started 2011 in recovery mode, admittedly weak and unbalanced, but nevertheless there was hope.

“Yet, as the year draws to a close, the recovery in many advanced economies is at a standstill, with some investors even exploring the implications of a potential breakup of the Eurozone, and the real possibility that conditions may be worse than we saw in 2008.

“I draw four main lessons from what has happened.

• First, post the 2008–09 crisis, the world economy is pregnant with multiple equilibria—self-fulfilling outcomes of pessimism or optimism, with major macroeconomic implications.
• Second, incomplete or partial policy measures can make things worse.
• Third, financial investors are schizophrenic about fiscal consolidation and growth.
• Fourth, perception moulds reality.

“Put these four factors together, and you can explain why the year ends much worse than it started.

“Is all hope lost? No, but putting the recovery back on track will be harder than it was a year ago. It will take credible but realistic fiscal consolidation plans. It will take liquidity provision to avoid multiple equilibria. It will take plans that are not only announced, but implemented. And it will take much more effective collaboration among all involved.

“I am hopeful it will happen. The alternative is just too unattractive.”
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Question: At the very beginning of implementing the program of an integral society we will need to somehow overcome all sorts of disagreements. For instance, how do we convince a person that he can do with an apartment that’s 500 square feet and not 2,000 square feet like his neighbor’s? What kind of arguments can we use?

Answer: As we continue to move toward integration, people will be changing their lifestyle. Every person will need their own room in order to study and not bother others. I think that one room per person is enough, plus a common living room and other auxiliary rooms—that’s a normal living area. We can provide everyone with these conditions, assuming we stop chasing after excess and adopt this standard as the model home.

The same applies to food. It’s very easy to calculate the necessary amount of food for a person. This could be a certain set that complies with one’s habits: national, cultural, and so on, but restricted in terms of assortment, meaning less than 50 kinds of sausage that currently line the supermarket shelves. All this variety is simply pointless. Presently someone is making money off you with this, but once the issue of livelihood is settled, all this excess automatically disappears.

Over the course of the crisis hundreds of millions of people will lose their jobs, and their purchasing power will take a nosedive. This will force dozens of redundant kinds of food off the shelves as no one will be buying them. These cutbacks will happen naturally, and we don’t have to worry about them. The world will naturally sever all the excess from the basic necessities for a normal and healthy life.

Comment: For people who have lived in socialist regimes and experienced the phenomenon of a growing deficit, which forced them to spend tremendous amounts of time and efforts to acquire the bare necessities, this sounds kind of scary because they immediately picture long lines.

Answer: There won’t be any lines. I think that everything will be delivered to people’s homes. You will order what you require, and an organization responsible for food supply will deliver everything to you. Similarly, other organizations will provide apartment repair and other types of services.

These are the necessary types of jobs that will remain with humanity, aside from specific industries, agriculture, and so on. Essentially, we will be spending our time and efforts on what is really necessary.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” 12/12/11

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Question: You are saying that in the case of a conflict you should first separate the rivals. But the hatred is growing worldwide. If everyone stays in his “corner,” how will people connect?

Answer: First the two rival parties should be separated so that there will be no quarrel. Fighting will certainly not help the connection. When people are hostile to each other, they can’t learn about mutuality, not even theoretically. Imagine that we are fighting passionately, not listening to one another, and meanwhile we first of all need to hear each other at least a little. So, we are separated, each one is placed in his “corner,” and we communicate from a distance.

Suppose we gradually get closer and we go through stage X_I and X_II. Here we have a problem. We have both drawn apart from our initial positions that can’t be bridged, and as a result we are in doubt and don’t know what to do. Usually we come to a dead end.

This phenomenon is well known to diplomats: The two parties get closer, more and more, but suddenly they are thrown backwards. Why? It’s because they have drawn too far from their starting point and have stretched the wires that connect them to the starting point too far. Behind them there are the people, their enemies, and their political rivals, and they all say: “Look how far they’ve gone! How can you make so many concessions?”

Eventually we are both unhappy with the new situation. Each of us remembers the principles he has given up and doesn’t see any point in any further concessions. It’s as if we say to each other: “It isn’t worth it. Imagine what they will do to us at home if we meet midway. They’ll kill us.”

So what should we do? There is only one way out: comprehensive upbringing. You won’t achieve anything until you educate everyone so that they advance towards connection together with you. In this case, when you get closer, you don’t get away from “your side,” but simply go through phases of development, just like me.  Even if we leave the negotiations aside, it won’t send us to different sides; on the contrary, we’ll stay in the same place we managed to reach by our mutual nearing. This is what we get through education.

But in order to reach that, we must first separate the two parties, to build an education system for each of them which suits them, and to draw the ties between these two different camps. Even if both sides are ready to negotiate, there are still the people on both sides and different social sectors. They don’t understand our reasoning, they are still in a different state, and so we can’t approach each other yet. They’ll set us free only for a certain distance, but not more than that.

If you are looking for true correction, you will be able to allow people to come down from the initial position and to advance towards an opposite one only with the help of education.

Question: All this does exist in mutual relations between states, companies, and even in the family. But does the first phase always require total detachment? For example, do the EU countries have to separate and only then look for a solution?

Answer: No. It’s because this case is a bit different: They are already untied, although not so successfully. If you already have a connection, you should be very careful not to break it. Otherwise, you will be going against nature. If the Europeans do that, things will be much worse. So they have to go forward towards integration as much as possible. There is no other way.

But in order to do that, they have to change their principles. After all, nothing is more separated, alienated, and divided than Europe. History has arranged for its people to hate one another very much. Only education can help here.

If the European leaders stall for time and start mass education, the situation will improve. People will immediately begin to develop on the level of consciousness and understanding of the world. But unfortunately, the Europeans don’t see or understand this option yet.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/29/2011, “The Freedom”

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The Creator created us as egoistic and forced us to break. We arrive after all of the preparations performed from Above downward, and that’s why it’s impossible to demand from us to want and attain bestowal. We need to be realistic and try to do what we are capable of doing.

But in reality, we are given the point in the heart with which we can perform some external actions directed towards bestowal. However, this does not occur inside the heart since it is completely egoistic.

This is how we establish our relationship towards bestowal: depending upon what will outweigh what: the point in the heart or the heart itself. The heart pulls everything towards it. This is its nature. The point in the heart is also pulling towards somewhere, and it’s not clear where. Both have forces opposite to each other. This state is given to me from nature.

However, through the means of the environment, I can increase the strength of the point in the heart by ten times, a hundred times, or a thousand times, that is, however much the opportunity presents itself thanks to the group and my connection with it. If the strength in the point in the heart becomes greater, I’ll be able to arrive at a state where I am able to balance it with the heart and try to outweigh it.

Sometimes the heart will win, sometimes the point in the heart will win, and in this way I will go through ascents and descents and move forward. It will continue until I finally have invested enough efforts in order to raise the point in the heart above the heart. One needs to continually try to achieve this overturn.

At first, I have the heart, black and evil, and the point in the heart. The point is very small, and the heart is much bigger than it. However, by virtue of connecting with other points and striving for bestowal, I receive from them the strength to withstand my heart, to fight and annul it, as it were.

Each time, applying ever more efforts of this kind, I finally arrive at the breaking and  understand that I am not capable of anything, I have no strength. This is when I raise a prayer (MAN) and a miracle happens—salvation!

There are a lot of transitions going on inside, and this doesn’t happen directly, but rather an overturn takes place. After all, we are not asking for what we receive afterwards. That’s why it’s called a miracle.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/27/2011, “Introduction to TES”

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Baal HaSulam, “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose”: For observing Torah and commandments in order to bring contentment to our Maker rapidly develops that sense of recognition of evil, and here we benefit twice:

A. We do not have to wait for life’s ordeals to push us from behind, whose measure of goading is gauged only by the measure of agony and destructions….
B. We save time, for He operates to “enlighten” us, thus enabling us to increase our work and hasten time as we please.

On the second path we don’t wait for the suffering that constantly pushes us according to the natural process of evolution. Each time I feel negativity in the present state (desire -1), I run to the state that seems positive (desire +1). Then again I discover the negativity of the new desires in it (desire -2), and searching for a filling I move on (desire +2). Then again the whole process repeats itself: I discover a greater negativity (desire -3) and look for a way to fill it, until I reach a new positive state (desire +3).

Thus, I am being pushed forward by the sufferings that push me again and again in a most painful way. So how can we follow a different path?
It’s very simple: If you want to move on to the next state by yourself, before the negativity is revealed, don’t wait. You can hasten the process and shorten the time. You only need to understand what you are lacking. What you are lacking is a new desire, that minus (-).

“So this is what I lack! So I can have it with the help of the environment, meaning the group, the books, and the teacher.”

Thereby I do not advance under the pressure of egoism. My advancement is now different in quality: The desire of the friends motivates me, which is the whole difference. Before I followed my egoism, like a beast that only grows in size, but now I am moving forward with the help of another force, the force of the group that comes from the Light, from the Creator. This is where the human in me, who resembles the Creator, grows. This is because I receive the group’s desires and am filled with awe and impressions by them, which I fulfill.

Thus, I don’t just restrict and sweeten the path of suffering, but actually follow a different path, and that’s the whole idea.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/1/2011, “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose”

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Question: I read the book The Kabbalist, which among other things talks about how Baal HaSulam tried to reach the world. He told people everything but they didn’t listen. Why should the world listen to us today?

Answer: Baal HaSulam lived at the beginning of the present era and really wanted to hasten time. Before WWII he tried to arrange for 300 Jewish families from Poland to come to Israel. He wanted to establish a special group in Jerusalem, whose members would work in a small factory in order to make a living and be together all the time, connect all the time. He wanted to unite the people with his newspaper “The Nation.” He went back to Poland when the workers’ uprising began, hoping to direct them all to unity….

Baal HaSulam saw that the next level, the next state, is global unity. There are no intermediate levels. We have to rise from here straight to connection. But in his time there weren’t the right conditions for that. People ridiculed the Soviet Union in which a new society was formed by oppression. As a whole, the world has advanced the American way, towards attaining the “American Dream,” and it was impossible to talk about correction according to the method of Kabbalah.

However, today things have changed. I would like to emphasize that we are not talking about our accomplishments. On the contrary, we are small compared to all the groups that preceded us. However, considering the state of the world, we have to succeed. After all, today the world is helplessly facing all the emerging problems. The world has never been in this situation which seems like a dead end. It’s now clear that we are sinking into a total economic crisis and that we can’t do anything about it. There’s nothing to hope for and there’s no way out.

This is why the method for correction is being revealed now. It turns to the world not by calling it to bestow upon the Creator, but by a message of mutual guarantee that’s being revealed very clearly on the part of nature itself. Everyone sees it, but they don’t know how to reach compatibility with the Creator; they don’t know that it’s by equivalence of form with Him that we can have all the abundance in the corporeal world.

We are working together on our level, aspiring for the upper force to be revealed in the point of unity between us. For us mutual guarantee is unification at the higher, spiritual level of Galgalta ve Eynaim (GE), thanks to which we, Israel, will pour the upper Light onto the world. All of humanity is actually one system, and hence, if the Light will be in us, it will certainly flow onto others.

This is exactly what our convention is for: We draw the Light from the Source so that it will be revealed between us. Then after the convention we’ll see great changes in the world. People will feel a special force: “Perhaps we can connect after all?” Suddenly this will be the real solution for them. There is no need to “escape,” there is no need to break up the common market and international relationships. On the contrary, with the help of all the present institutions, we have to change the approach and to aspire for unity and not for anything else.

The previous mechanisms are being destroyed and we have to provide everyone with a minimal reasonable standard of living and a sense of security. Everyone should receive the basic necessities. Humanity that feels so helpless now should adopt this approach. The developed countries are in a state of economic, industrial, and financial decline.

According to what is written in Kabbalah books, today, considering our investment in the world’s needs, we have a very good chance to reveal the upper force in order to correct ourselves. We only have to use our intentions as much as we can.

Clearly we are all egoists, and each of us thinks about his own well-being. Even in the group each one looks for his gain and not for bestowal upon the Creator. If we are lucky, we remember Him occasionally. But this doesn’t matter. All our efforts are accompanied by an egoistic desire “Lo Lishma” (not for Her Name), and we aren’t demanded to do more, just like babies. We try, we really make great efforts, and so the convention can really unite us.

Then we’ll be able to reveal the upper force for the first time, in order to correct ourselves and to pass on the correction to the whole world. All the signs and Kabbalistic writings indicate that it’s possible, and we simply mustn’t doubt that.
[62272]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/1/2011, “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose”

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Writings of Rabash, Igrot, “Letter 19,” (Start with: “However, because of the breaking of the vessels”), To: “Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai “
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Chapter “Beresheet (Genesis),” “Let There Be Lights,” Item 98, Lesson 25
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“Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Item 18, Lesson 12
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Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Freedom,” “Taking After the Collective,” Lesson 15
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