Audio Version Of The Blog – 01.01.17

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Summarizing 2016: Economy

 Question: 2016 wasn’t easy for the world economy, but the world has somehow survived. It all started with the big drama around China and fears that it would sink, losing its entire former heyday, and that it would drag the entire world with it into the abyss.

Then, the dramatic situation continued in Europe with the vote on “Brexit.” No one understood its consequences, fearing the collapse of the big banks and the entire banking system. Dramatic events followed one after another.

But on the other hand, despite all of the economic turmoil and a sense that the current method has exhausted itself, in terms of the economy, 2016 wasn’t bad. The world economy is out of crisis and unemployment has decreased.

We treated the little symptoms of the disease without touching its foundation and managed to survive another year. How can you explain that every year it seems that this is the end of the existing economic approach, but the world continues to live through it year after year and nothing changes?

Answer: This just proves that economists can’t change anything. They only think that through their games in the stock markets and banks, they determine the life of the world. The world will continue to survive because the problem is not in the economy but in the relationship between people.

So I do not think that we should worry about the economy. Well, even if there would be another collapse like in 2008 or a devaluation of 20 to 30% all over the world, so what? Banks will steal another few billion from the poor and cover their shortfall.

Question: Economists say that the model based on profit fails all over the world. Life expectancy increases, the number of workplaces is reduced sharply, and robots push us to retire. But there are no possible solutions to those problems. There already are discussions about the introduction of a universal guaranteed income. So, where is the world going?

Answer: Economists will have to take all of this into account, and it will be part of the new economy.

Question: Why are so many people optimistic after the election of Donald Trump as the US President and hopeful for a positive change?

Answer: It is because Trump is a man versed in business. He knows how to do business and refers to the world as a private business.

Economists shout that the world’s economy is on the verge of collapse, but no one wants to take care of the entire world. The economy has become integral all around the globe. Yet, they can’t work together to see the entire world as a home, as their family, as a single country, a single society, and to begin to take proper care of it.

Instead, they perform insignificant calculations: “I am here, and you are out there,” but that doesn’t work anymore. There is a contradiction. On the one hand, the economy must be uniform throughout the world, and on the other hand, economists are unable to think in such a global way.

In other words, economists are the problem. How do we convert them to people with a broad view of the world, not just of their pockets? Otherwise, tomorrow, they will lose even what they have in their pockets.

Question: In 2016, we witnessed the economic collapse of entire countries (Venezuela), the currency denomination and extraction of banknotes from circulation (India), and the economic problems in Greece. How will this affect people?

Answer: It will hit everyone, even billionaires who will suddenly find that they have nothing left of all of their billions. If America has such a huge public debt, how it can be covered? Let’s say that it is necessary to pay off the debt today, so how many billions would be left in the world?

Question: It is impossible to pay off the US debt, but no one is requiring it. Everyone is trusting in the US dollar and therefore are not asking for the repayment of debt.

Answer: However, if they balance the economy and reduce the debt to zero, then every dollar probably would be worth 50 cents or less. Hence, all of it is a fiction.

Question: If such a businessman like Trump has come to power, would it accelerate or, on the contrary, slow down the process of correction and the recognition of evil?

Answer: I think that Trump wants to put everything in order. After all, he understands that in today’s world, everyone is very dependent on each other: China, India, USA, Brazil, and Russia. It is such a vast economic network that no one can be free from it.

Question: But if I am John from Wisconsin and Trump organizes everything, I have no motivation to change my life. Yet, we were talking about the process of correction and the recognition of evil, about moving to new relationships and new economy.

Answer: John from Wisconsin doesn’t need to change, but Chaim from Jerusalem must. Chaim and Sarah from Jerusalem are obliged to change, and then John from Wisconsin also will change, along with Fritz from Berlin, and Jack from London.

The problem is how Trump will put pressure on Israel so that it will finally begin to engage in spiritual correction. The spiritual correction must take place in Israel, the financial correction in America, and then everything will be fine.
[199576]
From the Talk Summarizing 2016 12/25/16

Related Material:
The World Economy: On The Threshold Of Drastic Changes
The Collaborative Consumption Economy
New World Economy

Why Do We Eat Donuts During Hanukkah?

laitman_627_1Question: Why do we eat donuts (Sufganiyot) during Hanukkah?

Answer: Firstly, it is because they are round. The circle represents completeness.

Oil is something airy, from which comes the Light. After all, the Light was always in the lantern, rising from the oil burning on the wick.

During Hanukkah, we eat sweet donuts because this holiday symbolizes the way out of the bitterness of this world into spiritual sweetness. This is a sweet holiday.
[199565]

Related Material:
New Life #653 – Chanukah: World Correction
New Life #470 – Chanukah Then And Now
New Life #469 – The Meaning Of Chanukah

Blitz Of Kabbalah Tips – 6/9/16

laitman_281_02Question: Why must a person penetrate the thought of creation?

Answer: This is precisely why people were created; this is exactly what the Creator requires of us. The upper force has only one thought—to provide a person with all the conditions for attaining the level of the Creator.

Question: Why does the Creator “send me” communications through a negative environment?

Answer: If you did not get negative impressions, what would you want to escape? The whole world was created to push us into a corner.

Question: Is good fortune always the result of attracting the Light on us?

Answer: Yes, good fortune is a result of the influence of the Upper Light. Even if this influence is felt as negative, it is good fortune.

Question: Why does a woman need to adhere to her husband?

Answer: In our world, a woman symbolizes the desire to receive, the Malchut that receives from the first nine Sefirot, which in relation to her are the male part. So she must adhere to him.

Question: Can we feel our relatives after death?

Answer: I don’t know how to express this simply; if he is a Kabbalist, then yes.

Question: Can birth be the start of correction for a woman?

Answer: The participation of women, even passively, is part of their correction in this world.

Question: How does the wisdom of Kabbalah relate to unequal marriages, for example a man who is much younger than a woman?

Answer: According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, there is no significance to this, age makes no difference.

Question: How is it possible to explain the prophecy of Vanga?

Answer: In principle, prophecy is possible on the beastly level. There are people who feel the future and can say precisely what will happen to you tomorrow. But in general, they will not say. In fact, the future exists, but it is concealed or revealed in relation to us.

Question: Does the soul correspond to the body or does the body correspond to the soul?

Answer: The body corresponds to the soul as something external relative to something internal. The soul determines the entire destiny of the person.

Question: How is it possible to know whether prophecy is true or false?

Answer: It is not necessary to engage with prophecy. The wisdom of Kabbalah is against this. We need to decide and determine our own futures.
[197043]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 6/9/16

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“Before They Call, I Will Answer, And While They Are Yet Speaking, I Will Hear”

laitman_236_01It is written in Isaiah 65:24: “…before they call, I will answer, and while they are yet speaking, I will hear.” This means that before a person opens his mouth or feels an emotion within his heart or a thought within his brain, the Creator arranges everything for him, in the heart, in the brain, and in the mouth. There is nothing that comes from a person himself, but only from the Creator.

The only freedom of choice a person has is to attribute everything to the Creator, to understand that “there is none else beside Him” (Deuteronomy 4:35), that He is the “good and beneficent,” and that everything exists according to this principle only.

A person only needs to come to this realization—that the Creator is the only one who operates within all of reality, all around him, and inside of him, and that we are the result of His actions. All of our work, at every moment in life, is to reach a state in which we merge in our awareness with the higher management.
[198146]

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Farewell To Fidel Castro

laitman_259_02Comment: Fidel Castro has passed away. A million people attended a rally in honor of his passing in Havana.

In his time, Fidel Castro liked to hold long meetings; he was able to inspire people. They don’t want to part with this romance because they see what is happening in America and Europe.

My Comment: The fact is that Cubans are not inclined to the American way of life, to cold, calculating business. Therefore, shooting in the air, dancing, carnivals, cigars, and all the rest are much more suitable for them. Of course, Fidel was very close to the people, but when I spoke with his daughter in Miami (she manages a radio station in Spanish), she was seriously opposed to her father and didn’t agree with him on many issues. So she ran away from Cuba to America and dedicated her life to an ideological fight with him.

Question: In your opinion, would it be possible to add the concept of unity or similarity with nature to communism?

Answer: With such people as the Cubans, maybe it is possible to achieve something, but I still don’t think anything good would come from it because they haven’t advanced to complete, terrible egoism yet.

People must understand that there is no other way. They must first reach the end of their egoistic development; they must realize that the ego has exhausted itself and that we cannot continue to work with it because it begins to separate us. Some rise to the top (the elite), and others sink to the bottom to complete poverty, and there is nothing between them. It turns out that 90% of the population at the bottom will be impoverished and 10% of the population at the top, excessively wealthy.

So what to do next? Both the excessively wealthy and the impoverished are at a standstill. You can’t give less to the poor because it would start food riots. There is also nothing you can give to the ones at the top, so how will the rich accumulate their billions under their mattresses? And most importantly, at the bottom there is no purchasing power. So how will those at the top be able to earn more?

Society is divided into two parts. There is nothing more for the elite to exploit and the lower strata only have the minimum to sustain themselves. We had to reach such a state in order to understand that egoism is what has brought us to this. The conclusion is very simple: we have to engage 90% of the global population with the “production” of a human and building a new society!

At the same time, people should receive adequate medical, social, and other support. Their training will be interspersed with sports, drawing, and other activities. The main thing is that they all will be busy from morning to evening:women, men, children, adults, and the elderly.

Egoistic development has completely exhausted itself. Egoism, that is eager to absorb the entire globe, has exhausted itself. Now we have to put things in order in our home and live in peace.
[198153]
From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 11/30/16

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Communism: Utopia Or Reality, Part 11
Communism: Utopia Or Reality, Part 6

A Bad Marriage Is Better Than A Good Divorce

laitman_543_02Question: Why do women feel more dependent on their husbands more before the divorce and men feel more dependent on women after the divorce?

Answer: I generally think that a bad marriage is better that a good divorce. When a couple is married, the man wants to be free because he feels that his wife is like a prison guard who follows him and constantly limits him. And when he gets divorced, he feels he lacks these “chains.” There are advantages and disadvantages to everything.

We have to know how to get along with each other. We need to understand the nature of man who wishes to escape like a little boy, and on the other hand, still wants to return to his wife and rest in her lap like a little boy in his mother’s lap. We are all naturally built in very different ways.
[197036]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 6/9/16

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New Life 794 – Tribalism

New Life 794 – Tribalism
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

We are all born connected, but the developing egoism grows and separates us. Instead of having connected hearts, we begin to communicate to benefit at the expense of others. Today people are immersed in work and the connection and warmth between us has been lost.

The distancing between people began in the days of ancient Babylon. Egoism was first revealed there and in our time it has spread to the whole world.

Tribal life is like life in the womb, like being in the bosom of the mother, a place in which a person feels secure and lacks worries.  The feeling of security comes to a person through the people around him, through the power of nature.

Abraham taught the Babylonians that when people connect, the positive force of nature, the Creator, is revealed between them.

The ego is like an invisible monster between us that prevents us from understanding and feeling others.
[197997]
From KabTV’s “New Life 794 – Tribalism,” 11/29/16

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 01.01.17

Preparation for the Lesson

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Lesson on the Topic: “How to Give a Correct Prayer”

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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Vol. 1, Part 3, “Histaklut Pnimit,” Chapter 2, Item 2

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Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Matan Torah” (The Giving of the Torah)

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