Question: What more can I do if I feel I’m unable to ask for correction or to inspire my friends?

Answer: Every morning you wake up to go to work in order to sustain your living. You don’t question whether to go or not because you understand that without working you can’t survive.

Why do you question the spiritual work or think that you can get by without it?

The state where you think that you can live without working for spirituality and feel too lazy to put in any effort, thinking that you’ll advance anyway, is given to you purposefully because therein lies your freedom of will.

In your corporeal life, you can’t be lazy because no one will give you free bread. You are forced to earn a living and put in the effort. Don’t you think that the same principle applies to your spiritual life?

You work eight hours a day in order to sustain your corporeal body, but how many hours did you spend working for your soul in order to fulfill it and provide it with spiritual food?

If you don’t do this, then you’ll remain on the level of your corporeal body. If you don’t know what to do, it is said: “Do all that’s in your power!”
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/1/12, “Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Question: What should I cling to during the reading of The Book of Zohar, to the group, the Creator, or Rabbi Shimon?

Answer: There is no Rabbi Shimon, no Creator, no group, no Light—nothing. There is an inner impression of a person who is divided into such terms.

I do not know what exists outside of me. I just know that there is something called “I,” and I do not know what it is. And this “I” is impressed by something. I do not know what impresses it either.

Thus, I am in a certain state called “my reality.” I need to investigate this reality now: Who I am and what do I feel? The science of Kabbalah talks about this: how to reveal this state.

We begin from here. This is called to “grasp the meaning of life.” We are talking not about our life on earth for several decades, but about attaining the very essence of reality in which I and what I feel are namely this presence in my first realization: “I” and “feel.”

The entire science of Kabbalah is intended for a person to reveal the true reality—what happens to you when you get a sense of what it is, what this imaginary world that you see presents, and in general, the entire reality, life and death, good and bad impressions.

Why do they come? In order for you to begin to form yourself: who you are, what you feel, how and so on—until you begin to discover the point of stability from which you will be able to watch and start to organize the whole reality. This is what the science of Kabbalah is.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/2/12, The Zohar

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If we want to build a place for the revelation of the Creator, then each of us and we altogether have to awaken love between us. However, we should be careful that this does not erase all other sensations. Everyone should critically evaluate his attitude so that “love covers all transgressions.”

This inner work is called the awakening of love in the hearts of friends. It could be manifested outside in some ways, but the main work is going on within a person. And then, as it is written: “Through the love of creatures to the love of the Creator.”

From this world, we get a corrupted impression about love and misunderstand what it is. Love means that I want to help the other reach the best possible state, desire to give him all good; this is the sign of love.

Whatever this love is—love for the Creator, creatures, or friends—its greatest aspiration is to reveal the Creator, which fills all the desires and hopes. This applies to all people.

And if we are engaged in dissemination and wholeheartedly try to offer everyone, in a form suitable for them, the opportunity to discover the power of good, which rules the world, this is an expression of our love—even if we do not sense this love in our hearts, and just act and try to connect our intention to this action seeking to reveal to everyone the method of the revelation of the Creator, and we oblige ourselves to add to that warm, sincere attitude, the thought about the benefit of man. It does not matter what kind of people they are, the worst or the best, because the revelation of the Creator cures all evils.

This will mean that I aspire to love them although I feel no love towards them.

Even from our world we know how love is shown; if parents love their children, it is obvious from their attitude because they want only good for their children, and their successes make the parents happy all the time. Love is manifested in the desire to bring the loved ones to the best condition—the revelation of the Creator. And it is trying to do it with all the warmth, and the sign of the correct action is joy. [Read more →]

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Everything depends only on the intention. Anyone can open a book and study—from a philosopher to a person who sees this book for the first time and doesn’t understand anything in it. But each one will interpret it in his own way, the way he wants to.

The difference between us and all the others: the clever and the stupid, the scientists, historians, philosophers, or kitchen maids, is that, when opening the book, we want to tune ourselves in such a way that will allow us to penetrate through it. I want this book to tell me about myself, I want to reveal my world inside it.

And external readers don’t do this; they cannot see behind printed letters, they seek human wisdom in this. And that’s why they perform all kinds of studies on these texts: what they talk about in terms of notions of our world, which historic events, which style they are written in—as far as the usual material mind can apprehend.

The difference between internal and external reading is your willingness to enter the text and reveal yourself, your inner life in it. But you can’t blame people for approaching these books externally (The Book of Zohar, the works of Ari and so on). Because an inner need to reveal the internal world hasn’t developed in them yet.

The point in the heart is not present yet, the starting point of the line of connection and the beginning of spiritual revelation. If you don’t have this desire, you can’t reveal it.

When you do have the first point, the surrounding Light can already stick to it. It still cannot enter it, it only surrounds it from all the sides, but because of this we already can’t be in a state of rest. We feel that we exist in a field of forces of the Light, which shakes and swings us.

If I don’t have this point, I don’t feel any field, Light or fluctuations and I feel like everything is fine. But as soon as the Light starts irritating this point, a problem appears and we proceed…. [Read more →]

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Opinion: (Henning Meyer, a Senior Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics and managing editor of Social Europe Journal): “As 2011 draws to a close, it is fair to say that this year has been one of the most disastrous for the European Union in its history. The eurozone crisis has spread from the periphery to the core and all political and financial rescue packages were too little, too late.”

My Comment: Apparently, a European sense of superiority and stubbornness do not allow the EU to come to unity in a short and easy way, but only through the path of suffering.

“The inability to move beyond the perceived short-term ‘national interest,’ at the expense of what is better in the mid to long term, has been a key reason for the EU’s powerlessness to respond adequately to the challenges it faces. We are moving towards political deadlock in a severe and worsening crisis and the forecast for next year doesn’t look good either.

“Last week Christine Lagarde of the IMF issued a warning not just against the looming downturn but against 1930s-style policy responses of protectionism and isolation in the name of the ‘national interest’ (here it is again). …Protectionist policy measures will trigger defensive responses, which will worsen the aggregate situation further so a depression becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The world has been in this situation before – and it did not end well.”

My Comment: Specifically in the name of national interest, it is necessary to establish a close relationship and comprehensive program for merging the EU into one whole!

“If we continue on current trends, I predict more than one riot for 2012. One of this year’s novelties, stemming from junctures such as the Arab spring, the ascendancy of the Occupy movement, and the massive protests against economic policies in Spain and Greece, was the rise of new social movements and the widespread use of communication technologies to co-ordinate civil unrest. Once the genie is out of the bottle it is almost impossible to put it back in. So unless the protest causes are addressed effectively, which seems unlikely, civil unrest is set to continue and grow next year.

“But unless EU leaders completely change course and overcome political and legal obstacles to install the European Central Bank as a lender of last resort, draw up plans for a real fiscal union, introduce eurobonds, devise a strategy for new growth, pursue necessary structural reforms in surplus as well as deficit countries, and finally reform the financial sector, there is little hope the current malaise can be overcome.”

My Comment: If the ECB knew what it needs to do!..

“And a mixture of disappointment and outright anger could also tempt other countries to reassess their membership, sending the EU into a process of disintegration, which would spell further economic and political disaster. It is not too late to change course, but the window of opportunity is closing very fast. If we continue down the current path, the Unwort des Jahres 2012 will not be ‘national interest’ but rather ‘return of nationalism.’ We are on a slippery slope and EU leaders would do well to fathom the long-term consequences of their actions.”

My Comment: The fact is that only the understanding of the plan of our evolution and following it will allow us to take correct steps; otherwise, the corrective forces of nature will cause an even greater crisis to show us the correct path, but this is the path of suffering.
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Opinion: (Sergei Kurginyan, political scientist, from iarex.ru): “The path of modern development, which the West has been taking for 500 years, is over. It was a great path, but today humanity has completed it. We need a different path.

“The only country in the world that is familiar with it is Russia. We have a real live experience. After all, the Soviet Union was developing. But the valuable experience of the USSR is banned. I know that the world has accumulated great contempt towards Russia for rejecting itself—in India, China, and Vietnam.

“But at the same time, there is a hope that the Russians are about to wake up and invent something new again. Of course, they may commit follies, and then the world would steal these ideas and improve them. And when that hope dies, Russia will be finally sentenced.”

My Comment: I am personally in favor of taking experience from the former USSR and building a new integral society and humanity, but certainly with a preliminary implementation of integral education and upbringing for everyone. Specifically the lack of education and upbringing of the population and replacing its conscious participation with a forceful one under the red terror created all the prerequisites for the failure of the great communist idea.
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Opinion: (Nikolay E. Ablesimov, from neablesimov.narod.ru): “One of the main characteristics of the development of modern science is the desire for integration, combination of methods of various sciences, and the establishment of general laws.

“The order in any system can be either in balance or imbalance. In the former case, parameters of the system are identical with the environment. In the latter case, parameters are different. Economic and social systems are also described through parameters.

“The balanced order is more stable, and resistance to disturbances is inherent in its nature. An ability to return to its original state is a property of self-regulating systems.

“The imbalanced order is of an artificial origin and exists only due to the application of external energy. Indeed, the imbalance of systems and environments brings about flows of matter and energy; to maintain order, losses have to be compensated from outside. If the supply of energy is stopped, the system will come into balance.

“In physics, a tendency towards balance is known as the principle of least action, in biology, as the law of survival, and in economics, as the law of supply and demand. Its essence is that the system tends to change in such a way as to minimize external disturbances and to get out of changes with the least losses. All suggested principles used to govern the stability of the phenomena and to belong to organization.

“Self-regulating processes are studied in “synergetics,” the theory of collective action. If cybernetics studies the sustainability of the use of negative feedback, and a general systems theory, the principles of their organization (discrete, hierarchical, and so on), the synergetics studies imbalance and instability as natural states, as well as their multiple and ambiguous development.

“Synergetics studies the imbalanced world in the uncertainty and alternative nature of its development, in chaos in which a future order appears.

“There is a multitude of development paths coming from the present state of the system (the bifurcation point). Then, they all converge in the next steady state (the point attractor).

“Synergetics studies the properties of divergence and convergence, bifurcation and attractors, patterns of development of self-organizing open systems, and transitions from chaos to order and from order to chaos.”
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Question: What other sections are included in the course on integral upbringing?

Answer: The most important part in our studies is to realize, in theory and practice, the integration of all people among themselves, regardless of age or gender: men, women, and children. Studies, psychological trainings, taking this message to the masses and smaller groups, and the creation of brand new means of mass media that would educate a person rather than deform him, all this should be our main and primarily practical course.

The other courses we discussed also include practical studies with children and adults conducted by a psychologist. But the courses mentioned above are the main ones.

Also included as a major component in children’s upbringing are excursions to plants, factories, planetariums, and other places. We introduce children to agriculture and the animal kingdom to show them how nature exists in its pure form and why the still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature develop the way they do with respect to one another. The tools we use to this end include educational films, excursions to the woods, the lake, the sea, and so on with explanations and very precise and correct conclusions about integration and interconnection in nature.

Then we continue with studying the human society: how it evolved from the animate part of nature, came out of the caves, came down from the trees, and what it achieved in its development, that is, what we built for ourselves to replace the lairs that were our homes, the enterprises we founded to no longer have to hunt mammoths, and how we established our interconnected, mutual assistance and support. We study the structure of all sorts of medical, financial, industrial, and research institutions, how supply and demand works, and how humanity is connected via all these systems. And, of course, we study the universe.

In our efforts to examine life and the world, we conduct very serious excursions, and not only for children. We see how excursions expand the children’s perspective and turn them into thoughtful adults. After each excursion we require the children to make a report including: where they were, what they saw, and why things work this way or that. That is followed with a discussion. All these things together ensure a very thorough grasp of the material. An excursion itself may happen no more than once per week because it takes time to discuss it, write compositions on the subjects, and so on.

The same applies to adults who are also of the opinion that pastries grow on trees, meaning that they are not familiar with production processes and have no clue as to what humanity does for them. Excursions for adults also lead to integrality and interdependence, which is why the understanding that you exist thanks to the entire world that works for your benefit is crucial from the standpoint of education, moral support, and the feeling of cooperation. If we present this information to the person in this manner, his outlook on everything in the world changes drastically.

The most important part that stems from these excursions is that we then scrutinize whether we need this particular enterprise or not, whether it’s a necessity or an indulgence that we can do without, not at our expense, but simply because we wouldn’t miss it if it were gone. Thus we gradually teach the person to pay more attention to the inner world, and not the external one.
[64966]
From a “Talk on Integral Education” 12/12/11

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Question: Behavioral psychology speaks of a so-called “triangle of mutual understanding.” Two of its angles represent communication and empathy, and the third is a shared reality. In the integral upbringing, communication is conducted in a circle. From the point of view of behavioral psychology, it is assumed that in the process of growing mutual understanding, empathy increases too. Now a question arises: Is a shared reality that very integrality?

Answer: We must exist within it. Not inside ourselves, but outside of the self, within this shared reality that we create because this is precisely what objective reality is. Everything that exists inside of me is subjective, that is to say, pure lies. I lie to myself about building my own self. That world is absolutely unreal, invented by me.

Sometimes I am talking to someone and wonder about how differently we perceive the world. I am speaking about one thing, and he sees a completely different picture and talks about something else. And he is absolutely sincere, just like me, because each of us is coming from our own sensations.

Thus, it is necessary to rise higher, into the common desire, the common mind, the common heart and brain, and to observe the world from within the collective image of man that represents the totality of all of us. Then we will see the world as entirely different: not individualized, not distorted by our intrinsic, inner qualities.

If as many people as possible would gather into the common system of “man” (the joint image of man), then naturally, we will see a completely different picture of the world, universe, and ourselves. And it will be enormously different from what we see today. After all, the picture of the world depends on subjective perception, and psychologists know this very well.

We only need to show that if you take your inner desires and properties and compare them to others, that is, to the emerging collective image of man as a single whole, then from within it you will start to observe a truly different world.

You rise above yourself and distance yourself from your body, from your personal qualities so much that the body is no longer important to you. As we see from experience, it is very likely that it will start to be perceived as something foreign, like an animal that exists near you. When you enter that collective image of man, you see your body existing on an animate level. And the generalized image of man belongs to the human level.
[64446]
From a “Talk on Integral Education” 12/12/11

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Question: There is a person’s inner psychological world, but there is also a more external, social level that includes a family and interactions with loved ones. If a person exists within this integral system, does he perceive everyone as if they are his loved ones?

Answer: The sensation of “animal closeness,” the so-called closeness of blood kinship, completely disappears. All people become equally close. And with that we erase absolutely all boundaries.

I am not talking about parents and their children—those ties are very tight, but even they already manifest differently. We literally observe that in our experience.

We see that in today’s world the basic natural connections are breaking down; they are no longer as tight as they were before. Parents give their children away for other families to raise, abandon them. Children leave their parents too soon, they don’t feel a special connection with them. The connection between generations is disappearing.

It is as if nature itself pushes us toward this state from within so we would perceive everyone the same way. Naturally, our upbringing elevates a person above the animal connection.

By “animal connection” I mean a physical one. After all, by birth we belong to the animate degree. And the human level is a collective, generalized level in which we unite in a single desire and mutual ascent above our innate qualities.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” 12/12/11

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