In the News (from ScienceDaily): “Scientists have found that when just 10 percent of the population holds an unshakable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority of the society. The scientists used computational and analytical methods to discover the tipping point where a minority belief becomes the majority opinion. The finding has implications for the study and influence of societal interactions ranging from the spread of innovations to the movement of political ideals.

“’When the number of committed opinion holders is below 10 percent, there is no visible progress in the spread of ideas. It would literally take the amount of time comparable to the age of the universe for this size group to reach the majority,’ said SCNARC Director Boleslaw Szymanski, the Claire and Roland Schmitt Distinguished Professor at Rensselaer. ‘Once that number grows above 10 percent, the idea spreads like flame.’”

My Comment: This means that according to science, in any confined space, area, state, society, or around the world, we only must have our friends comprise 10% of the population so that our method of correction becomes everyone’s property! This is the consequence of the influence of Malchut, the tenth part of the soul on the entire soul.
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In the News (from VOX): “The link between higher national income and higher national life satisfaction is critical to economic policy making. There is a clear, positive relation in the poorer nations and regions, but it flattens out at around $30,000–$35,000, and then turns negative.”

My Comment: Many similar studies have been conducted out today and they all come to the same conclusion. Kabbalah says the same things: A person needs rational satisfaction of his bodily needs (his animal level), and all other contentment (of the soul) he should receive only from revelation of the Creator.
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The Torah, “Leviticus”, 11; 9-11: These may ye eat of all that are in the waters: whatsoever hath fins and scales in the waters, in the seas, and in the rivers, them may ye eat. And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that swarm in the waters, and of all the living creatures that are in the waters, they are a detestable thing unto you, and they shall be a detestable thing unto you; ye shall not eat of their flesh, and their carcasses ye shall have in detestation.

The word “fin,” which stems from the Hebrew words “hates Light,” symbolizes the Masach (screen) that rejects the Light, not wanting to receive it for itself. Scales refer to the Masach that is above the desires and around the body. Not only does it reject the Light, but also changes it from receiving to bestowal.

These types of desires are weaker than the beastly desires and so they can be used. They don’t need any explanations as to how they should be slaughtered, bled, and eaten. A fish can also be eaten with milk because it isn’t considered meat. Therefore it says “neither fish nor meat.” This is another state of a person’s desire that is much lower than phase four (meat).

The desire called animal is a very complex system, and we should know how to slaughter it, how to prepare it and make it Kosher so that it can be eaten, which means to raise it to the human level. All the desires of the still, vegetative, and animate nature have to be raised to this level.

Things are very simple with the still nature; you simply decide what is fit to be food, like salt, water, etc. You can also test the water on a dog. If a dog drinks it, then a human can drink it too.

In the case of food from the level of the vegetative, we should know what the plant is and whether fruit trees and bushes have given fruit for three years, after which they can be picked and eaten.

If it is fish, it has to have fins and scales. The fish doesn’t have to be slaughtered. If you catch it and throw it on shore and it suffocates it is considered dead. You don’t have to hit it on the head, shoot, or to cut it. It makes no difference how it dies.

With an animal, however, everything is much more serious and complicated since it a great leap from the fish level and even from the level of poultry. You have to determine very accurately if your desire on this level can be corrected in order to bestow.

Animals are slaughtered in a special way, by cutting the neck artery. This is true for all animals except for deer which can be killed by an arrow and still be considered Kosher. There is such an attribute.

All the other farm animals have to be tied and their neck artery cut so that they will bleed quickly and painlessly. Then they have be skinned and the tendon carrier has to be removed, since it is forbidden to eat it. The upper parts of the carcass are separated and the meat is cut and salted for a certain length of time inclined in order to remove all the blood completely. Only then it can be cooked.

What is more, we should know exactly how long the meat is to be cooked so that it is fully cooked. This is an essential condition. This is the process of preparing food from animals that symbolizes the strongest, egoistic desires in us that need such careful correction.

These laws are very complicated and very detailed. If we look at the Babylonian Talmud we will find whole chapters that discuss the preparation of food. But they all explain how to work with our internal desires not how to prepare Kosher food in a restaurant or at home. What we do in our daily life is a tradition, and all these laws are only so that we will attain the human level.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 1/22/14

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Question: What should I learn from yesterday’s experiences?

Answer: I should realize that yesterday my relationship with others was bad and what damage I have caused myself by that. Things cannot get better without the recognition of evil.

I have to realize how my short-sighted ego injures me since I have hurt others without feeling that it is actually me.

I decide that from now on I will do good for myself and for others, as it is written: “Love thy friend as thyself.” I reach the recognition of my evil egoistic nature and decide to rise above it. Thus I ascend above myself and move on to others, that is, I incorporate the desire of others inside me that become as important to me as I am to myself.

It is like a mother who feels the desire of her baby and lives within him. It is this same state we need to reach and begin to live in others. In this way I get closer to the concept of eternity by ascending above time.

Question: How can I not torture myself if I see that yesterday I treated others egoistically?

Answer: But I see that it wasn’t up to me; that it isn’t my fault and that I was created that way, a desire to receive.

Comment: But anyone can say, “It isn’t my fault, this is my nature!”

Answer: The whole question is whether I accept this nature or not. If I clarify it as a result of the right education, according to the method of connection, I realize that it is intentional so that I would want to change. I have to incorporate into others by different actions so that my desire and the desire of others will become one.

It is as if we all live in the same bowl. There is no difference between what is good for another and what is good for me or between what is bad for another and what is bad for me. This is the feeling I have to attain.

Thus I change the past, the present, and the future, because I include all of reality, all the people, into one desire and it all becomes my desire. The human desire also includes the desires of the still, the vegetative, and the animate nature. It turns out that all of creation is me!

Then I begin to discover that life is eternal and that there is no time: no past, no present, and no future. There is only the constant, increasingly growing incorporation into everyone else. This is a totally different time, as the change of states of an increasingly deep incorporation and an increasingly stronger feeling of life.

I see that I can discover the desire of others infinitely by my connection with others and enjoy together with everyone for everyone, like a mother who has a billion children and can fulfill all of them.
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From the program “A New Life” 4/17/2014

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Baal HaSulam newspaper, “The Nation”: In that sense, we are like a pile of nuts, united into a single body from the outside by the sack that envelops and unites them. Their measure of unity does not make them a united body, and each movement applied to the sack produces in them tumult and separation. Thus, they consistently arrive at new unions and partial aggregations. The fault is that they lack the inner unity, and their whole force of unity comes through an outside incident. To us, this is very painful to the heart.

Someone who supposes that we can unite the people and build a nation according to the usual pattern is greatly mistaken. Without understanding our nature, he thinks that we can act like other peoples who go back home after a forced expulsion, such as in the days of Stalin. The people who were expelled returned and re-organized their lives. But we have not succeeded in doing this because we have lost our original roots. We were once united and were brothers to each other, not brothers in misfortune like today, but brothers in mutual bestowal. Abraham initially gathered people from all corners of Babylon who were ready to go toward connection with him, unlike the rest of humanity.

This unity that Abraham gave was reinforced at Mount Sinai when the people who fled from Egypt became as one man with one heart and received the Torah. But later the connection was broken and the love became unfounded hatred; as a result of this, we went into exile. This hatred passed in part to the nations of the world as well.

As of today, we are not ready to be reborn as a people and a nation without reaching a correction of each one separately and a collective correction between us. If we don’t reach this, then only an artificial “collection” of people who do not correspond to the higher laws of nature or the laws of the lower nature that operate here.

We are not ready to build something according to the laws of this world because we originally didn’t belong to this world, and we cannot be built according to the higher laws because we have not as yet connected to the higher level. Aa a result, we are not here nor there, not this way nor that way.

What is amazing is that we were always strangers and foreigners in this world. And the 66 years of the existence of the nation of Israel are not proof of anything. I am not asserting this for anti-Zionistic reasons but from the spiritual standpoint: We undoubtedly have lost the natural power of unity, which is inherent to all the rest of the peoples on a physical level.

For us it was a spiritual force that united us. So now we are not a people, and our current consolidation is not a nation until we understand and agree that we only have one simple constitution, which is, “And you shall love your friend as yourself,” Arvut (mutual guarantee), “as one man with one heart.” We have no other constitution. And if we maintain this condition, we can restore the people and the nation.

We must build our lives according to this constitution, for it isn’t just plucked out of the air. Rather it was received from above, and this is the difference between it and the beautiful words that can be found in the fundamental laws of every nation. Clearly this will not be immediate, but we must realize this law gradually, and bring a spiritual life on earth. And it is also up to us to be a “light to the nations” in its full meaning.

Yes, it’s hard work, but without it we will not succeed in anything. Otherwise we can be fellow sufferers at best, like nuts in a sack, and nothing better will happen with us.

This is the current situation, and it may continue for another number of years until one of two things will happen:. Either we will carry out the correction or we will not be able tolerate the situation any longer.
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From the 5^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/23/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: In what way is the realization of guarantee among the people of Israel different from that among the nations of the world, i.e., the group and 99% of humanity?

Answer: Almost nothing. Certainly, the Light acts differently on each group: the upper (the people of Israel) and the lower (the nations of the world). But the guarantee may be peculiar to the mentality of the other nations, let’s say, Columbia or Malaysia. There is no significance in this.

In every case, you must simply yearn for this state, and the Light will arrange everything. It will cleanse, it will scrutinize, it will accommodate, and it will assemble. You will witness the work called the work of the Creator, and you will see how this will happen.

Question: Must the guarantee be realized among the friends with mutual strength?

Answer: In principle, no. I cannot check the Arvut (guarantee) of my friend. However, I need to enter maximally into this state. The moment we connect with the help of the law called Arvut, immediately we become an integral vessel in which we feel the Creator, in other words, the fulfillment of our desires that are mutually connected and integral.

However, when I try to create a general, integral desire, I must be ready to give everything over to friends. Mutual guarantee, mutual responsibility, I need to give over everything and what the friend does with me and what level he is on, how this seems to me (for in fact I don’t see his inner work), I need to appreciate maximally, for he is with me in a group.

In order to correct my vessel, I must feel his full participation, which depends upon this, how much I imagine that he is in full Arvut.

This means that I must locate myself correctly here. I don’t criticize; I don’t scrutinize who is in favor of Arvut and who is against it, who in the group is stronger in Arvut or who is weaker. I accept them all as absolute, and that is how I work. In fact, this is truly so because, the moment I establish my attitude toward the friends and say that they are all absolutely corrected and only I am not corrected, the system begins to mold me according to how they are.

I begin to receive Ohr Makif through them, and it molds me absolutely, according to their form.
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From the Sochi Convention 6/10/14, Lesson 3

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Question: We have a great need to have morning workshops. We would like to learn how you compose the questions that are difficult to answer and that force us to go beyond our limits in order to find it.

Answer: In general I ask two types of questions during the workshops. Either it is a question that has no answer for which you need to strain, like during childbirth, in order to find the common “fruit” between yourselves. After all, when such a necessity for everyone all together arises, then the center of the circle is born.

Thus, the question needs to be such that the person feels it tearing him apart inside and that he can solve it only if he gives up everything he has and merges with the others, hoping and making efforts to connect with the friends to find the answer.

Or it is a question where we need to clarify something from within that same common point that we found. And then the questions come in a certain order of the system and should follow in a logical way one after the other.

Here people need to support each other and connect even more. Technical questions might be interwoven with sensation questions, but people constantly need to work in the center of the circle.

There are circumstances in the workshop, when it is effective to draw a person out from the current process of the discussion. Suddenly a question is asked that seems to be from a completely different world. This is good too because confusion causes a reaction in people, one needs to find a foothold. People need to find it in the center between them.

These workshops are necessary for us; they are not meant for the external public. After all, we don’t want people to knock their heads together where each person is within himself. For those, we need to pad it with something soft so that they will not fall.
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From the Sochi Convention 6/10/14, Lesson 2

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The Torah, “Leviticus” (Shemini), 11:1-11:3: And the Lord spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying to them: “Speak to the children of Israel, saying: These are the creatures you may eat among all the animals on earth. Any animal that has a cloven hoof that is completely split into double hooves and which brings up its cud, that one you may eat.”

Beasts are called “Kosher” and are fit (with the same root in Hebrew) for consumption if they are completely cloven footed and chew cud. These signs symbolize the attributes of the spiritual world.

When we want to correct our desires, we first restrict them and then divide them into Galgalta Eynaim (GE) and AHP, into desires of bestowal and of receiving. This division is called Parsa (which also means hoof in Hebrew) and is symbolized by animals that have completely cloven hooves. In that state, GE are above the Parsa and AHP are below the Parsa.

The process of digesting the food and chewing the cud refers to the constant connection between Malchut and Bina and to the mutual cooperation between them: The raising of the desire to Bina in order to correct it and returning to Malchut again.

The human body is built according to the same principle. The most typical animal exemplifying the proper digesting of food is the cow. In contrast to animals that swallow food, cows are ruminants, they constantly chew the cud and regurgitate it.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 1/22/14

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Now everyone is equal, there are no exceptional people in the group and it may remain that way in contrast to all the previous generations since eventually we have to reach a certain Assembly of Kabbalists (“Sanhedrin,” a spiritual guidance).

Although there were differences among the Sanhedrin, we can imagine what hasn’t been fulfilled yet, but we can’t know anything in advance.

We have to act where we are now, find out what our role is and fulfill it. We shouldn’t worry about what may happen in the future. We shouldn’t ask about the future because that would be for our own benefit as our desire to receive is involved.

But with regard to the teacher, you must annul yourself when it comes to spiritual matters, as if you don’t exist. Otherwise, you will not be able to advance. Our advancement is only by annulling ourselves before the upper, so you have no other choice.

It says: “A blow from the elderly facilitates building, while building by the young leads to destruction.” Even if you think that the teacher is wrong, it makes no difference. Let him be wrong, and later you will see how the Creator turns this the other way around so that this mistake becomes a benefit.

There are states in which you have to accept everything that the teacher says without any doubt, to annul yourself, and follow his advice without clarifying why it is so and without wanting any proof. This is a small level of faith.

On a higher level of faith you’ll want to hear explanations as to why the teacher advises you to do certain things; you’ll criticize and see how much you object to a decision because you think differently, but yet you’ll still do it. You should fulfill it as if you have no complaints; you agree with him, and are totally adhered to him. Then you will be adhered to the teacher with entire your ego, especially if before you were against him.

But this is only true for great people. You should always listen to your ego until you can completely adhere to the teacher. It may be only minimal participation when you listen to what you have to do and do it. Perhaps you can invoke your own criticism, see how much you are against it, and still adhere to his opinion more and more. Thus, you grow inside the teacher like an embryo.

The more you annul your ego by fulfilling everything that the teacher wants while you are in complete disagreement, the more you turn yourself upside down like an embryo before leaving its mother’s womb. This is how you are born.

After your birth there is even greater work with more serious doubts and problems. They are typical of the state of smallness, the period of childhood, the wrath of childhood, the different Dinim, and it is always directed towards the upper. All our work is in annulling ourselves before the upper.
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From the Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/23/14

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