Question: How do you relate to the missile attacks in the south of Israel?

Answer: During the operation “Peace for the Galilee,” my teacher, Rabash, was very worried about the situation. He listened to the news every hour, and when he was asked why, he replied that he was worried about his children.

This is an example for us—we also need to worry in this way. A person needs to feel that all the people in the world are inseparable parts of him. Then he will worry about them just as he worries about himself, being in concealment and not feeling the oneness of the world within him.

One should not wish for anyone’s death, even for the death of one’s bitter enemies. We want them to become corrected and in general, we wish only good for everyone, and especially to the citizens who find themselves on the firing line. Of course, one shouldn’t allow anyone to take his life away, and thus in the Torah there is a law: For the sake of self defense, it is preferable to kill before being killed. But this is on condition that it’s really necessary and there is no other choice. In this situation, death serves as a correction. However, if you are able to correct the person during this reincarnation, do it.

In addition, we must remember our friends in the South of Israel. Together with them we pass through the process of our and the world’s correction. We must be with them in mind and soul.

Before the lesson, I watch the news in order to know about events that took place in the previous hours. We all need to be connected to this. We hope that all of this will be included into the framework of correction. If we exert effort faster, the states that come upon us by the path of suffering will invert to the path of the Torah. Then everything will be arranged in the best possible way, and we will acquire life without limits, in the entire world. We are able to initiate it, and there is no doubt that the Light can do this.

It’s very good that the friends join the lesson from the shelters. Rabash and myself did the same thing during the Gulf War.

And in general, we are in favor of a cease fire, in favor of ending all the conflicts in the world, in favor of destruction of all weapons, and in favor of man’s correction. This is mutual guarantee. Since we have become, against our will, guarantors of each other in a system that ties us together, the time has come to open our eyes and feel it in action. There is no other choice: We have to feel that we are each other’s guarantors.

However, when the mutual, inner connection appears before a person, he goes into shock. It turns out that it is all me: my parents, my children, my friends, strangers, and those I hate. It is such a huge variety of so many relations, and all of them are me, one Partzuf, the 10 Sefirot.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/12/2012, “Introduction to TES”

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Question: In the process of any activity there are criteria of work effectiveness. It’s very important for people to understand whether they are doing their job well or not, in order to increase its quality accordingly, to add efforts, and so on. What can the criteria of effectiveness be in integral groups so that a person aspires to carry out his activities better?

Answer: We have a very serious self-evaluation system for this. Because you are constantly in a small society, you can always control yourself within it: How congruently connected to it you are, how closely you interact with it, how much it influences you, whether you place yourself under its influence, how much you can influence it, how much you can lower yourself relative to it, and how much you can feel yourself to be the voice of decision making in order to influence the society.

It means that all of these criteria are the environment and I: I am above it in order to positively influence it; I am below it in order to receive positive influence. And it’s the same for the environment relative to me: It influences me from above, and it wants to receive from me my share of participation in it from below.

There are very simple, direct methods of evaluating one’s states. A person can say where he is practically every second.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #11, 12/16/11

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Question: At school, the teacher usually asks a question and a student answers. You have a completely different approach: You ask questions very rarely and, as a rule, wait to be asked questions. Why?

Answer: This is because I basically crave, aspire for my explanation to evoke in a student emptiness, empty places, meaning questions in order to know, to learn. A correct explanation does not “shut him up,” does not give him fulfillment. It reveals a little bit of what I am explaining and then a student suddenly runs into: “But why is it so? What if it’s not so, but different?”

It’s as if I instill into my explanations my questions, the opportunity to ask, and perplexity brought about by them, and I do it in advance. I want them to find defects in my explanations. This will help them grasp my explanation, understand it better, and to absorb it. This is very important.

That’s why if I am explaining and everything is clear to everybody, and there are no questions, I consider that I haven’t explained anything at all. I feel very bad then. When there are many questions—“this is not so, not from here, not like this”—then this is the material that will be absorbed for sure.

Comment: A question though, is not always a question….

Answer: Turn it around, do what you think is necessary so that the audience will learn from it. A lot of people ask, but they don’t know how to formulate the question exactly. We understand that the teacher must help the student here and to feel him or her.

I believe that if I transmit the information in 15-20 minutes, and then questions take up twice as much time, then this is a lesson truly absorbed. This is very important. It’s as if you are throwing them bait, and they swallow and clutch at it. With the help of this bait, they necessarily must approach you, hold on to you. It’s because the question and answer or an explanation begins with the fact that you have something and they don’t. You are trying to pass on to them what you have at the given moment decided to pass on.

The transfer has to consist of you giving them the information, and them, in response, asking any kind of questions from the entirety of the material that they have heard (only heard!) in order for them to experience, master, and completely absorb it inside. And this is only being reached with the help of questions, questions of various kinds, and from various kinds of people.

Question: What is the characteristic of an answer with which I shut off the interest of a person?

Answer: I never do this. I try to give an answer in which I purposely touch upon another, some kind of a crafty aspect. The student immediately has a reaction here: “Really? And how does this work?” This means that the answer leads him to other questions.

I want for the entire material, which I gave them during the first 15 minutes, to later be penetrated with questions from all sides. Then it will stay in them. I help them with my answers to ask a new question. The correct answer carries the next question in itself, and a correct question is already half the answer.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #11, 12/16/11

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Question: You are saying that the force of reception will continue to grow as the force of bestowal keeps developing in us? Will it not diminish?

Answer: A new force of reception will grow in you as much as the force of bestowal will develop in you. It is not the force of a little egoist, which you were using on the animate level or on the level of a person of the “old world.” Now two forces are developing in you together, forces of a person of the new world.

Until now you were developing instinctively, like any animal. But unlike an animal, you have developed to such a level of egoism that it has simply become unbearable. And now you are trying to develop the force of bestowal with the help of the environment.

Bestowal assumes more than a gift; it is giving, mutual participation, closeness, support, mercy, to the point of love. Love includes all the other manifestations of connection and the ability to feel the desires of another. This is called the force of bestowal.

The moment I begin to develop this force within me, a second force begins to grow parallel to it, the force of reception, and it helps me to bestow. Because I do not have anything myself, I am unable to give to others, there is no way for me to establish a connection with them. But by using my entire force of reception, I can bestow to others.

I have only the force of reception by nature, and I have existed with it from the beginning of the universe until now. And now a question arises: How can I learn to bestow to others, to society, which will not accept me otherwise and will think that I am a savage, a nobody. I will feel shame in front of my children, my wife, relatives, all the people I care about, my closest environment, which even an egoist has.

I feel like everyone regrets my existence. And then I begin to understand that I need to begin to bestow. But how can I bestow? I can bestow through the force of reception that I have and connect to bestowal.

I have a big egoism that enabled me to win, to build, and do things. And now I use the same force to benefit others. This is called the force of bestowal. But these are very internal things, which a beginner probably cannot understand. They will not summon an inner response, a reaction, because we are not built this way. From this point on, we already need the force of correction contained in the Light that Reforms.

So, our conclusion is: By acquiring the force of bestowal, I develop an inner ability to see the entire world as if it were transparent, to see through it, to know what happens, to fix myself, my family, my immediate and distant social environments, and to arrange my life in a perfect way.

It enables me to attain the state of absolute happiness. I feel included in the eternal reality, and I rise to the human degree that gives me the feeling that life is worth living, existing, and continuing our species, having children. I feel satisfaction and fulfillment in life.

And all this happens by acquiring the force of bestowal though the proper environment.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #12, 12/16/11  

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Question: You say that all of our development is meant to raise our consciousness about who we are. So, who are we?

Answer: First of all, we are not animals existing inside of our bodies and only caring about how to fulfill it. Second, we are not simply egoistic creatures obliged to please our ego, which plays us and pushes us toward various false goals, only giving us suffering throughout our whole lives. It is written: “A person dies without having achieved even half of the desired,” meaning that no one is left satisfied about his life and while dying, does not take anything with him. Now, we have arrived at such a state where we are left with nothing, even prior to death.

However, we are creatures who have an absolutely unique potential, and we are located at the very top of nature that created the entire universe and, as a result of this wondrous process, developed life on earth along with us. This is what the goal of human development consists of.

This development, by the good or forceful path, must end with everyone attaining the whole of all-encompassing nature, identifying themselves, and reaching balance and perfect connection with it, which in Kabbalah is called “adhesion.” All of the person’s qualities have to be used for the sake of bestowal, serving the force of bestowal, like all of nature.

Then, we will see where our development has been leading us, in the form that existed before the planet earth was formed and afterward, in the periods of the formation of the still, vegetative, and animate nature and then the development of man. All of these forms up until today, when we have begun to enter the new world, the world of bestowal, all of the past development in our egoism, in the world of consumption where we search only for how to receive more, all of it was only preparation for the human level that we now have to develop within ourselves.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #12, 12/16/11 

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Shamati #19 “What Is the Creator Hates the Bodies in the Work,” (Start with: “One must know that during the work,” To: “This matter is implied in the Citron”) 
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Chapter “Beresheet (Genesis),” “The Correction of the Lower World from the Upper World,” Item 297, Lesson 82
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 7, Item 14, Lesson 6
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Preparations for the European Congress: “Concerning the Importance of Society,” (Start with: “Therefore, in matters of work on the path of truth,” To: “Now we can  understand what our sages said”)
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