Audio Version Of The Blog – 02.19.13

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The Era Of Understanding

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Baal HaSulam says that in this era we have a chance to hasten the process of our evolution and reach the Creator. How can we identify this opportunity and fulfill it?

Answer: We are living in a special time and we are indeed given a chance. First, because the Reshimot (spiritual genes) that are awakening in us urge and push us towards the revelation of the Creator, the revelation of the essence of life. It’s because that’s the same cardinal question that awakens in people. After ages of human evolution a person really begins to look for the meaning of life, and doesn’t just try to live a better more comfortable life.

Fifty years ago we still thought that corporeal benefits were infinite and we believed that the prospects of the consumerist society were endless. “Everything is possible: We will fly to the stars, we will control the forces of nature, we will swim in affluence…” This was the direction of our ego.

But suddenly we have reached a kind of satiation, because our desire has begun to change; we have not filled all our desires; we have not provided everyone with a yacht, a palace, a private jet, a private island, or a personal planet to himself. No, we have not filled our desires, but the desires have simply changed, just as a young child’s desires change: A minute ago he asked for cottage cheese, but while you ran to the store to get it, he already wants a sausage.

There are many hungry people in the world today, people who are ill and needy, but the desire changes and while they lack something, it is clear to them that even if they get whatever they lack, they will not be satisfied. There is a filling and there is satisfaction. It is like the example that Baal HaSulam gives when the guest says to the host, “Even if you give me the whole world as a present, I will not be satisfied, since it is not mine.” There will be a filling but there will not be satisfaction.

We are speaking about two very subtle discernments, as a result of which on the last level of our evolution, despite the dissatisfaction, and the shortage we feel in our desires, a person looks for meaning in his life. A new desire emerges, and it is from this desire that a person expects to feel satisfied, even if he doesn’t have a filling in his previous desires and his previous hopes are not fulfilled; even if he only has the simple things left, he will look for satisfaction in what is important to him now.

So after money, after control, after technological prosperity, after the information age, we have risen to a new level, the level of meaning. People feel despair and commit suicide because they don’t find a meaning to life. This is the first sign of the era of redemption.

The second sign for being in the era of redemption is the awakening of the whole world, not only those who are looking for a meaning in life. The world is sinking into a crisis that is basically an inner psychological crisis. A person cannot manage his private life any more, and neither can he manage human society. Everything is destroyed and out of control since our ego has completed its development and has finished its work, and by that has nicely ended its role.

Soon there will be new very unpleasant diseases that stem from our overuse of harmful, poisonous materials that we have added to our food and to other products. On the whole, there will be all kinds of negative phenomena that are typical of the use of the negative effects of the ego. We fear a nuclear bomb, a meteor that may hit the earth, but in the meantime one virus can totally annihilate the whole world.

Eventually this world that needs to be corrected, we are striving for that and the means are being discovered; internally and and externally we are shown that we are in a time of opportunity.
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From the 4th Part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/17/13, A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar”

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I Don’t Feel That I Am Distant From You

Dr. Michael LaitmanBaal HaSulam, Letter 27: Of course I want to unite with you body and soul. Although I cannot work except in spirituality and in my soul, I know your soul and I can unite with it, but you cannot work in your hearts but only with the body since you don’t know my spirituality, so that you can unite with it, and if you understand that, you will also understand that I don’t feel that I am distant from you at all, but you need to be close to the body and the location of course, but it is for your own self and for your work, and not for my work.

But I pray to the Creator that He should lead you by the path of truth and that you will be saved from the obstacles along the way and that the Creator will be by you in everything that you do.

And on your part you have to be careful to follow the path that I have prepared for you, in the matter of the heart and mind, longings and prayers, and then the Creator will certainly help us and we will soon unite in our heart and soul.

Of course the distances are meaningless for a Kabbalist who understands the inner state of his students and it makes no difference what world he is in: in a body or without a body, distant in that world or nearby. If there is a connection between the teacher and the students, then nothing can affect it. It turns out that the problem is only with the students, for whom it is hard to manage without the physical feeling of one another or the teacher. So there is no other solution but to hasten the advancement as much as they can.
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From the 1st Part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/17/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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“Global Monetary System Headed for Collapse”

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (James Rickards, senior managing director of Tangent Capital Partners): The world currency system is riding down the road to catastrophe, says James Rickards, senior managing director of Tangent Capital Partners.

“The world already has entered a currency war that began in 2010 on the heels of the Federal Reserve’s massive easing program, he tells Wall Street Journal Digital Network. …

“’All major central banks are easing,’ he says. ‘Eventually so much money will be printed that this will lead to inflation. The endgame is collapse of the international monetary system — sometime sooner than later.’

“In both the United States and Japan, the central banks are trying to “import inflation” to get their economies going, rather than trying to boost exports, through a weaker currency, Rickards says. ‘They’re scared to death of deflation. They’ve cut rates, and the last resort is to cheapen their currencies.’

“When the international monetary system collapses, major financial powers will convene to plan the aftermath, he says. When that happens, each nation must have enough gold relative to its gross domestic product. …

“The global economy can muddle through this year, but major problems begin in 2014, he maintains.”

My Comment: If there is enough political force, they will restrict the money supply to the level of its gold reserves, and the world will get over it! The main thing is to take care of the daily bread and integral education for everyone. If in the past the concern was education of the population, this time it is upbringing because not only is an understanding of the new conditions of the integral global community as a family necessary, but also, the personal change of everyone so that he can become a member of the community.
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“France Is In Free Fall”

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (Shawn Tully, senior editor-at-large, CNNMoney): “From a quick look at the headline numbers, France doesn’t appear nearly as stressed as the derisively titled ‘PIIGS,’ Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain. …

“A deeper look shows that France is mired in no less than an economic crisis. The eurozone’s second-largest economy (2012 GDP: 2 trillion euros) is suffering more than any other member from a shocking deterioration in competitiveness. Put simply, France’s products – its cars, steel, clothing, electronics – cost far too much to produce compared with competing goods both from Asia and its European neighbors, including not just Germany but even Spain and Italy. … Even tourism is suffering because of the France’s high prices. …

“In fact, it’s France – not Greece or Spain – that now poses the greatest threat to the euro’s survival. …

“It’s unclear when the crisis that’s going mostly unacknowledged by investors and the Hollande government will erupt into a panic. The chance that France will lower labor costs by the 20% to 30% needed to restore growth is practically zero. Reforms can only happen when the economy is expanding and citizens feel good about the future, the antithesis of the gloom now enveloping France.

“France is heading towards an economic Bastille. The longer it stays on that path, the more possible that the eurozone regime it labored so hard to create will crumble.”

My Comment: The roller of evolutionary development inevitably pushes humanity to become aware of a new system of global interconnection. In our unity, we must reveal the property of bestowal without nullifying the will to receive but above it. In this case, we will have two properties at the same time and will be able to reveal the property of Creator in their being opposite and complements.

Only in connection with each other can we be in two opposite properties (desires, vectors): the natural—to receive and the acquired one—to bestow. We develop them as two planes: the lower one, the desire to receive, develops through the revelation of broken Reshimot naturally, and the upper one, the desire to bestow, we develop by our efforts. Their relative location is called “faith (bestowal) above reason (reception).”
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The Blind Leading The Blind

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (Slavoj Žižek, Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic, professor at the European Graduate School): “The idea is that, in a complex economic situation like today’s, the majority of the people are not qualified to decide – they are unaware of the catastrophic consequences that would ensue if their demands were to be met.

“This line of argument is not new. In a TV interview a couple of years ago, the sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf linked the growing distrust for democracy to the fact that, after every revolutionary change, the road to new prosperity leads through a ‘valley of tears.’ After the breakdown of socialism, one cannot directly pass to the abundance of a successful market economy: limited, but real, socialist welfare and security have to be dismantled, and these first steps are necessarily painful. The same goes for Western Europe, where the passage from the post-second world war welfare state to the new global economy involves painful renunciations, less security, less guaranteed social care. For Dahrendorf, the problem is encapsulated by the simple fact that this painful passage through the ‘valley of tears’ lasts longer than the average period between elections, so that the temptation is great to postpone the difficult changes for the short-term electoral gains.

“For him, the paradigm here is the disappointment of the large strata of post-communist nations with the economic results of the new democratic order: in the glorious days of 1989, they equated democracy with the abundance of western consumerist societies; and 20 years later, with the abundance still missing, they now blame democracy itself. …

“What is new today is that, with the financial crisis that began in 2008, this same distrust of democracy – once constrained to the third world or post-communist developing countries – is gaining ground in the developed west itself: what was a decade or two ago patronising advice to others now concerns ourselves.

“The least one can say is that this crisis offers proof that it is not the people but experts themselves who do not know what they are doing. In Western Europe we are effectively witnessing a growing inability of the ruling elite – they know less and less how to rule. Look at how Europe is dealing with the Greek crisis: putting pressure on Greece to repay debts, but at the same time ruining its economy through imposed austerity measures and thereby making sure that the Greek debt will never be repaid. …

“And therein resides the true message of the ‘irrational’ popular protests all around Europe: The protesters know very well what they don’t know; they don’t pretend to have fast and easy answers; but what their instinct is telling them is nonetheless true – that those in power also don’t know it. In Europe today, the blind are leading the blind.

My Comment: The process of growing should break out in the leading countries to force management to recognize its inability to understand and control what is happening. At the same time, more people will recognize the need to change their attitude towards themselves and the world, feeling the necessity to change not the world, its management, system, but to change the human being first, by way of the widespread implementation of a short course (2-3 months) in integral education, to raise awareness of the general population to the level where nature forces us to rise. After that, it is possible to introduce gradual reforms at all levels and systems of society.
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The Universal Key To Success In Life

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn today’s world, we reveal that nature compels us to connect with each other. It is possible to run away from each other in family responsibilities, but we can’t hide from public life of all of humanity. We all depend on each other. Once people were isolated and didn’t know what happened on other continents and in other cultures. Today, everything has become unified: culture and lifestyle.

Environmental laws, the laws of human society and of nature in general are revealed to us as global and integral, embracing us and binding everyone in a single system. It doesn’t depend on our desire; it is a requirement of evolution.

We have found ourselves in a round world and the problem is that due to their egoistic nature, people are not ready for this. How can we help people establish more friendly relations with this new world understand it, use it correctly, and be successful?

We see that we are becoming less successful, and instead of improving our lives, we are entering a global crisis that threatens to never end. A huge, strong and developed humanity seems like a small, frightened child who is lost and doesn’t know where to go. And all this is due to the lack of correct communication between human beings and the environment, our lack of understanding about nature. This is due to our insensitivity because we don’t even try to understand it.

Nature is all the laws within which we exist: climate change, weather, and human society. In a world of plenty, there are hungry children, and all because of the lack of connection between us. We are not even able to distribute surplus food that goes wasted.

Where can a person learn how to build a proper connection in order to establish a relationship between us before it comes to a big fight? How can we find the right balance in human society and the balance with nature that we must achieve if we want to survive?

All this can be learned from family life. If a person is able to develop his sensitivity, understanding, and correct attitude to his partner in the family, he will thereby acquire new sensations, determination, and approach to the understanding of society and all of nature. He will be able to combine all this together and to exist in harmony with everyone.

That is why we have to go through the process of building our attitude toward the family, then to a wider society, then to all of humanity and the whole of nature. It’s impossible to choose here: to live with a family or not, with one partner or the other, with or without children. This is the problem of humankind. All the studies show that the relationship between us is the main problem that needs to be resolved.

If I learn to properly relate to my wife, in this system closest to me, I will ensure the correct approach to all of life, to the entire world. That is, the relationship within the family teaches me how to achieve success in all areas and is the key to any success.

Moreover, nature is built in such a way that I can’t achieve the same result by building relationships with my fishing or drinking buddies; it needs to be the relationship with a spouse. Only in the family can I clarify all the sharp corners and subtle nuances of the pleasant and unpleasant traits of my character and perception. That is why a spouse is called a “help against me,” meaning that if I don’t see her in front of me, I can’t use her help in the building of self.

If you want to form yourself correctly in order to be able to understand the world and succeed on a grand scale, you have to create the tools for doing so in family life. That’s why a single person is not suitable for management positions; he’s not able to properly connect with the world. For this reason, often there is a requirement for one to be married in positions of higher responsibility.
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From a “Talk About a New Life” 7/25/12

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At Full Speed Into A New Civilization

Dr. Michael LaitmanToday humanity finds itself in a new completely unknown system. In order to understand it better, we will give an example of how half a century ago, a person who was accustomed to certain familial, societal, and economic relations suddenly arrived in a foreign country, let’s say from America to Russia, somewhere where everything was different and he simply did not understand why everything is arranged and structured in such a way.

Americans wonder why in Russia it is so difficult to implement a certain project. Since with them there would immediately appear some entrepreneur who would take the new idea, execute it, and profit from it. And in Russia, it was impossible, and therefore all remained in a very poor condition.

Conversely, when you a Russian comes to America, he sees huge individualism, competitiveness, and all in all no one caring about each other, each one is a narrow individualist who is only interested in his “I.” And this is the social norm.

Thus, this misunderstanding of each other amazed people, who found themselves in a different system.

And now, all of humanity is “entering” a new system, as if they are riding a train that rolls on and suddenly enters a huge unfamiliar park, a completely new civilization based only on mutual understanding and mutual cooperation. Together with this, the nature we were born with its movements and yearnings is not taken into account, only this reality that was prepared for us. But we don’t immediately find ourselves in this rigid system that is completely, mutually connected where we can only succeed by grasping the integral perception; nature gradually brings us to this in that it presses on us along the way of evolution.
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From KabTV’s “Professional Secrets” 2/5/13

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Smiles Are Disappearing In The World

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: I have a growing business, a chain of shoe stores. I don’t try to save money on training employees because it’s very important to build relationships with customers. But so far, no coach can help me teach most of the staff just to smile. What can I do? How can I teach them to smile, be friendly, and customer-focused?

Answer: About 30 years ago I came to America for the first time, and I was surprised to see a smile on every face, but in most cases artificial. But in recent years, all this is gone. I often go there and see that people stopped smiling. The American image of the past is gone. People are tired, depressed, insecure, and unreliable inside.

In the world, smiles are disappearing. This is due to the growth of egoism that demands for itself or may not demand anything at all. We are not in the mood to smile. A smile is the result of at least a little bit of excess energy in a person. And today it doesn’t exist in the world.

What can we do? We search for resources, reserves. And precisely here integral education gives a person a sense of the overall system, general dependence. You inevitably become kinder, happier. People not only begin to smile; they feel the need for each other, understand that one can’t live without it and that there is no existence without it! We find ourselves in such an environment where only our combined strength, mind, and thought can bring us to a good, kind state.

In the beginning, it’s realized against one’s will because of the need to be connected with each other with good ties, and then you become aware that this good interconnection has a special feeling, a miracle that is capable of creating something.

After all, good relationships don’t just cheer you up, they heal, they give you a different perspective on the world and life. They shake down all of the problems around you, the world suddenly starts to become smoother, and everything is settled and arranged. Life becomes easier and lighter. This is why modern employees must be taught good relations with each other first, and then, within these good relations, develops professional skills.
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From KabTV’s “Professional Secrets” 2/5/13

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 02.19.13

Preparation to the Lesson

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Writings of Baal HaSulam,Igrot,” Letter 8, Lesson 2

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The Book of ZoharSelected Excerpt, ParashatBalak,” Item 68, Lesson 5

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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Vol 3, Part 10, Item 13, Lesson 5

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A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar,” Lesson 15

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