Audio Version Of The Blog – 10.03.12

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Introductory Lecture – 10.03.12

Kabbalah for the Nation Introductory Series

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I Don’t Want To Curse The Creator!

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn certain states, the upper shows its reverse side in such a way so that I join it. Like a father to a son, he shows me how to play. Lowering himself to the level of a child, a father looks a little smarter and shows the son a small difference between what he is and what he should be. This is the reverse side of the upper one, not a father at his full height, but the difference between the child’s current state and the state when he has ascended one small step higher.

We can say that the Creator shows the current picture of the world to a person so like a child, he overcomes obstacles, taking this game seriously. However, this depends on the person. If he feels that he is in single concealment, that everything comes from the Creator, as a result of the past or as a precondition for the future, when time after time he sees that he cannot succeed, then the question arises: How can one rise above this?

First of all, should we ask for success? Of course not, because then a person would just use his normal egoistic desire and would distance himself from the Creator.

Perhaps, I should pray to the Creator so He does not send suffering for the past deeds or for the future reward? No, because this prayer would be attributed to self-interest. It is not designed for correction.

In both cases, a person seems to say to the Creator, “You have brought me closer to You. You shine the strongest Light on me now, and in it, I feel weaker, flawed, and corrupt. So, take Your Light back, so I can feel better!”

In reality, we need to ask for correction, “I agree with everything You teach me. It’s not the point. Let me experience troubles and problems if it is in favor of correction. But it hurts me and I curse You in my feelings, willingly or not: the overdrawn notice from the bank, a call from the police‑all my troubles. On the one hand, You shine a bit of Light on me, and I feel that You exist, but on the other hand, it makes me curse You in my uncorrected desires. I do not ask you to move away, depriving me of Your presence and the suffering associated with it. I ask something else: Correct me! Move closer in the feeling like the one who carries only good. Let me feel that You are the Good Who Does Good.”

Here, a very big problem arises: How can one judge oneself impartially? After all, I should ask this not to feel good, but only in order to justify Him. Just because of this, my heart aches. And if it does not ache, make it ache. I do not care about suffering, and in general about anything else except one thing: I do not want to condemn You. The issue is not about my feeling good I just want to raise You to the highest level, so that the property of bestowal and love that You represent become of the highest value to me.

If a person strives for this, he already begins to advance correctly. That is how single concealment should be felt, and how one should come out of it.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/2/12, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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How To Work Irrespective Of The Result

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: During the convention I feel that the group is a small part of something big. How can we keep this fire going in dissemination too? How can we not forget that there is a group and that there is something huge behind it and that it is the unity of the friends that fills our work with meaning?

Answer: During the convention we feel a great force; we look at the screens and see the friends from all over the world. With us there are hundreds of groups and thousands of people sitting alone who we don’t even know. Of course, it enables us to feel something, but we have to try to receive the fuel from something else—from advancing humanity towards the revelation.

You are actually asking how we can receive fuel. Of course, it is the impression from a big group that first fuels us; here everyone knows me and encourages me; everyone sees what I do, and together we want to change the world. In short, it is the power of egoism that is active here.

But later the scale of values changes in us. You exerted yourself, you acted, even egoistically, by wanting to bring your beliefs and outlook to the whole world and suddenly you discover that you have run out of fuel.

This is how the Reshimot (reminiscences) change. It is because there is nothing but that which can change. Our Reshimo is the only changeable parameter, the only factor that changes. And here it changes in order to allow you to work in a non egoistic manner, not wanting to impose your opinion on the world, to prove that you are right, and to take the helm.

The next Reshimo enables you to think more altruistically: “The head of the angle is not we and not me. Let no one know, not even myself, whether I achieve any results.” This approach is already closer to spirituality and that is the way you are advanced forward from Above.

More intensive support from the group is needed here. If you connect more strongly with the friends, you will feel that you have purer powers than before, “I really don’t care whether my work is fruitful. Just like sportsmen, I don’t need to see the result. I want to close my eyes and to act only in one direction, without checking the ‘inbox.’ I don’t care whom I have influenced and to what extent he has changed. I feel that I can bring something to the world, I tighten my connection with the friends and move outward, and there is nothing in response.”

So where can you get the energy from? After all, in a situation like this a person remains like an engine without fuel. He doesn’t have the driving force; he needs some response. Here he begins to demand internally: “I have to see myself in the force of bestowal!” It is like changing a conventional engine with an electric engine, switching from gasoline to electricity, to another form of energy. This is what you demand, “The desire to bestow must be revealed to me! If I cannot work within my desire to receive, I need the desire to bestow!”

Then you will get it.
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From the Convention in Italy, Day Three 9/30/12, Lesson 2

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An Intensive Inquiry

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How do I manage my states? Do they develop automatically or can I evoke them?

Answer: I manage my states when I am with the friends sitting in a circle with them and discussing different problems and options regarding the connections between us: When does the ego help us and when does it distract us? How can we attract the attributes of bestowal and love, connection, mutual guarantee, and so on?

When we discuss these issues, I am involuntarily in different contrasting states, such as “I don’t want to listen to a friend, but I have to listen to him, “he is higher or lower than me,” “I agree with his answer or disagree,” and so on. Why do I agree with him? It may be because I simply like him, but someone else not, so I don’t want to listen to him and I didn’t even hear what he had to say.

So, it isn’t just the process, but the issue itself, the words, and the interactions, everywhere at every level, when I overcome the egoism and the altruism. Eventually there is a revelation, an intensive clarification of these two opposing attributes inside me.

What is more, when I am in a discussion with all the friends, I first intensify my attributes and, second, I expand myself by absorbing them. Thus, a person develops in many aspects by the integration of and communication between the two opposing forces.
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From “A Virtual Lesson on Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 9/23/12

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Does Our Eyesight Show Only What We Have Seen?

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (Dale Purves, R. Beau Lotto Why We See What We Do Redux): “The First Edition of this provocative book reviewed a broad range of evidence leading to the conclusion that the visual system does not reveal the physical world by an analysis of retinal images and their representation by the visual system. Rather, what we see is based on the history of the species and the individual as a means of contending with the inherent uncertainty of light stimuli. It follows that visual perceptions are reflexive manifestations of past behavioral success rather than the result of a logical processing of present stimuli.

“When Darwin’s skeptics attack his theory of evolution, they often focus on the eye. Darwin himself confessed that it was ‘absurd’ to propose that the human eye evolved through spontaneous mutation and natural selection. Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) have now tackled Darwin’s major challenge in an evolutionary study published in the journal Science. …

“Researchers in the laboratories of Detlev Arendt and Jochen Wittbrodt have discovered that the light-sensitive cells of our eyes, the rods and cones, are of unexpected evolutionary origin – they come from an ancient population of light-sensitive cells that were initially located in the brain.

“’It is not surprising that cells of human eyes come from the brain. We still have light-sensitive cells in our brains today which detect light and influence our daily rhythms of activity,’ explains Wittbrodt. ‘Quite possibly, the human eye has originated from light-sensitive cells in the brain. Only later in evolution would such brain cells have relocated into an eye and gained the potential to confer vision.’”

Source: (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/10/041030215105.htm)

My Comment: According to Kabbalah, there is nothing “around” us; everything that we see as existing is an illusion. Everything is felt inside of us: ourselves and the world around us. By changing ourselves, our properties, which Kabbalah allows us to do, we can “change the world around us.” Rather, we begin to feel its relativity, the dependence of the picture of the world on a person’s (observer’s) properties. See “The Introduction to The Book of Zohar.”
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The Dual Shock Of October 2012

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (GlobalEurope Anticipation Bulletin): “As LEAP/E2020 anticipated since the end of 2011, the end of summer 2012 marks the beginning of the revival for Euroland. … That being said, Europe will be in recession for the next six to twelve months. …

“The more Euroland advances constructively, the more the ‘Potemkinien’ ‘character of the US, Chinese, Japanese and Brazilian…economies’ ‘health’ will show itself. The tree will no longer hide the forest, namely that all the major global economies are entering recession or slowing growth simultaneously, leading the socio-economic and financial world into a black hole. …

“For these reasons, LEAP/E2020 maintains its June 2012 Red Alert and estimates that, by the end of October 2012, the global economy will be sucked into a black hole against a backdrop of world geopolitics heated white-hot. Suffice it to say that the coming weeks will, according to our team, carry the planet away in a hurricane of unprecedented crises and conflicts. …

“As we have underlined on many occasions in the GEAB, the United States has, since the beginning of this crisis, refused to face reality by having increasing recourse to financial, monetary,… (and military) subterfuge to try and mitigate the consequences of the crisis. All this however is proving to be ineffective at the end of summer 2012, in spite of the trillions of Dollars thrown down what is proving to be a bottomless hole. …

“The US political system’s current and future impotence in facing its deficit problems combined with ‘sequestration’ of the Federal budget the effects of which are already making themselves felt throughout the US economy (as we had anticipated from spring 2012), will turn the coming weeks into an endless succession of bad economic news … against a backdrop of increasingly less well-managed geopolitical challenges. Because the anaesthetic is finished on this front as well! …

“Let’s quote Europe also as an anecdote, since Euroland’s accelerated integration de facto constitutes an ousting of US influence at the heart of European construction.”

My Comment: It all depends on the nature of the movement of the world towards unity, either along the good path, through an understanding of the only healthy condition, or when the understanding of this inevitable future state becomes clear not through thinking, but through suffering. It is necessary to reach such a state that every person in the world understands these two opportunities of bringing the world to unity, to similarity with Nature, which guarantees his welfare.
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Finding The Force That Balances The Ego

Dr. Michael LaitmanThere is an increasingly growing need for connection in the world today. On the one hand, the integral connection in the world is revealed, and on the other hand, the lack of our adaptability to it is expressed in the form of a crisis.

In order to help people who have the urge for spiritual development, which means for connection and unity, in this unity, in resembling nature, we will be able to reveal the upper force that manages it, to feel, see, and learn to master the system that controls us, the so-called upper world—for this we gather and want to gradually adapt ourselves to the state of balance with this system, with nature. Such a gradual, step-by-step approach is called the levels of the spiritual ascent, a spiritual equivalence.

These are serious, complex levels since we must overcome them and resist our ego. It is by resisting it that we get to know and attain this system.

Just as every system in our world operates on two counteracting forces (plus and minus, contraction and expansion, and so on), in between them there is a mechanical, electrical, pneumatic, or other mechanism, and these two forces are the forces of the development and motion of this mechanism, and in our bodies there are two constantly opposing forces. On the whole, they can be reduced to forces of absorption, absorption and secretion. We exist on the basis of these two forces. They more or less counterbalance or alternately act on levels of nature except for one interesting object: man.

A human being is under the influence of one force only: the egoistic force that controls, manages and rules him, and does whatever it wishes with him. There is no other force that is opposite to our ego, and this is our problem. So, we cannot be balanced, wise, and do what we want, but constantly do what the egoistic force compels us to do, even though it may harm us.

Look at what is happening in the world now! We are sawing off the branch that we are sitting on. We are polluting the air we breathe, cutting down forests, turning large areas into dry deserts, causing icebergs to melt, and bringing about disastrous changes in the climate so that soon it will be impossible to exist on this planet. The pace of this crisis is accelerating threateningly, and we cannot do anything about it.

Why is nature doing this? It is to show us the extent to which we are managed by this one egoistic force and how much we lack the other force that is opposite to it to at least reach a balance. Even if we were totally opposite to the egoistic force, even if we were absolute altruists, we couldn’t exist either. After all, there must be a balancing force between these two forces, the law of equilibrium, the law of the correct switching.

So, we need the other force, and we don’t have it. However, it is found on the levels of the still, vegetative, and animate natures. It is instinct!

Instinct causes animals to perform certain actions and not others. It restrains them and doesn’t push them to perform misguided actions. If a lion sees a stronger lion, he will retreat. There is a clear chain of command, check the strength and instant retreat. That is, there are restraining forces with regard to nature and to different phenomena, no matter what. Animals operate according to the simple principle of the ordinary animal ego that is balanced by a protective instinct.

We don’t have that. We are deprived of it, but we need to acquire it since otherwise we will find ourselves in a condition that threatens our existence!

The wisdom of Kabbalah is revealed in our times so that, somehow, we will be able to acquire this second force that restrains and balances our ego. It is opposite to the ego. It is called altruism, the force of bestowal, the force of love.

If we can discover this force in nature and, in some way, perceive it inside us and begin to mutually balance the two forces, we can be sure that that our existence will be secure, comfortable, good, and desirable. Otherwise, our future development will be simply disastrous. We see how we are lost in the ego from day to day and that it will begin to consume us while we are still alive and eventually leave us no hope of survival.

This is why we hold conventions. We do this in order to acquire the force that is opposite to the ego, to try to balance the two opposing forces inside us, and to attain the middle point in which we can be free—with freewill, freedom of choice—so that we can manage ourselves and advance. This is what we want to achieve.
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From “A Virtual Lesson on Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 9/23/12

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The Wonderful Attribute Of Balance

Dr. Michael LaitmanEach congress is a certain milestone, a certain level in our ascending to spirituality; we gradually begin to feel what is meant by unity, adhesion, and connection and what our development requires of us.

During workshops, lessons, and especially during congresses, each time, we push forward and break through to another level that advances us towards the great force, the altruistic force of nature.

From within it, in turn, we begin to perceive our ego. We begin to understand the meaning of our nature by our control of the new force of altruism and by beginning to attain it and reveal its contradictory meaning, the inner depth of the altruistic force. We see how great and wonderful these two forces are, if used correctly. Through studying both of these forces at the same time, with their help, we begin to see the depth of nature: its inanimate, vegetative, and animate components, and also the next levels of nature.

How can we grow further by continuing to develop both these forces in balance? The forces of egoism and altruism will continue to grow in us. But what is there beyond the horizon, that is, beyond the level of “Adam (man/human)”?

Let’s suppose, that we balanced all of this within us and on our animate level we arrived at a state where we completely control ourselves, that all of our actions are completely balanced, rational, and are found in the so-called middle line. Is there a continuation of the growth?

And here we really reveal the wonderful attribute of balance of these two lines. If you have attained balance, then both lines begin to lead you, like legs, alternately, this time the force of minus (egoism) grows, and next time the positive force (altruism) grows, and thus alternately, like two legs, you advance one step after the other forward. Together with this, your growth is not limited. Everything depends only on you.
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From “A Virtual Lesson on Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 9/23/12

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The Immune System Of The Integral Society

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: It is common knowledge that the human organism has an immune system that blocks and destroys old defected cells which are still alive. If we compare this to the integral society, does it mean that this system has to get rid of old sick people?

Answer: No. The point is that here we need a system that sorts out what is beneficial and what is harmful. There is nothing harmful in nature. It is all revealed this way to us because we don’t know how and what to implement correctly. Nothing is destroyed in nature. Everything that nature develops is necessary and so it should be the same in human society. This means that we are going to see how various intractable, negative forces remain outside of our success in integral education do so because we do not put in the correct effort.

On the basis of these examples, we will just learn to improve our system of education and teaching and thus advance. We should be thankful to all the revelations of our deficiencies because they constantly compel us to further develop this method and will serve as the basis for its development.

I believe that the revelation of the negative attributes is as beneficial as the revelation of the positive attributes. It is negative feedback that corrects our focus towards the ultimate goal.

Question: So it turns that a direct transfer of the human organism model, or of what we see in nature, and our attempt to implement it without explaining the real reasons why it is that way in nature actually leads to great problems.

Answer: No. Here it is implemented on the model of a closed living body, which we have to keep balanced. In order to do that we have to sort out, clarify, and analyze the elements or the attributes that we receive from the outside and what we need.

This is because we realize that no matter how much we try to absorb only what is beneficial from the environment around us, a lot of harmful things also enter the organism. That which is harmful needs to be identified, collected, and evacuated from the body. This is what our physiological systems do, and it is the same on the cognitive level. The immune system stands guard and destroys everything that penetrates the organism that is hostile to the body.

I think this system has to be created in society until it reaches its ultimate form. If a certain part of humanity is in the process of becoming integral, it will certainly have to set some limits and boundaries around it so that outsiders will not be able to influence it. This means that in contrast to the rest of humanity, these people will have to live according to laws and constitutions and different social and family relations, which they accept according to their spiritual level and their altruistic development.

Of course, like a healthy organism, they will have to protect themselves from evil external influences. Here there should be an immune system that warns if a negative influence is felt in the society, and should immediately identify and remove it.
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From KabTV’s “The Integral World: The Formula of Integral Society,” 7/1/12

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