News Report (from Media Release of the World Bank): “Call for Greater Focus to Help the Hungry” The Bank’s Managing Director, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, said with the food crisis still affecting millions of people around the globe, the international community needs to boost its effort to help the poor and vulnerable feed themselves. “Food prices are now volatile and that factor, combined with the impact of the financial crisis, only serves to heighten the challenges confronting the developing world, ”Okonjo-Iweala said.

My Comment: Since “love and hunger rule the world,” it’s possible that hunger will lead us to love (for our neighbor). However, we’ll be better off if we listen to Kabbalah’s advice and circumvent the hunger, going straight to love.

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Laitman.com Post: A Billion Hungry People Are a Real Threat, Warns Director of the UN World Food Program
Laitman.com Post: Real Care Is Helping Others to Develop, Instead of Giving Them Charity
Laitman.com Post: The Food Crisis Reminds Us of the Condition Set In the Torah: Unite or Perish

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News Report (from La Rouche Pac): “UNODC’s Costa Warned on Mafia Being Only Source of Cash for Banks in November” United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime director Antonio Maria Costa already warned that the world’s organized crime had become the “only sources of credit” to banks, in his personal blog on the UNODC website back in 2008.

In his entry for Nov. 19, 2008, Costa wrote:
“Today, the financial crisis is providing an extraordinary opportunity for even greater mafia penetration of cash-strapped financial houses: with the banking crisis choking lending, these cash-rich criminal groups have emerged as the only sources of credit.”

My Comment: This is how the egoistic world dies, while “getting high.”

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Our world is now at the end of its intrauterine development. The current crisis is like labor pains – the last stages of our egoistic development. And the way out of this state is the birth.

Baal HaSulam explains that “coming out of Egypt” is a spiritual birth. The whole of humanity is now completing its development as an embryo, and the global crisis is the labor pains preceding humanity’s spiritual birth. These labor pains can last for a long time, like it often happens in our world when the labor pain suddenly lets go of the woman, comes back again, decreases and again increases.

Therefore, we cannot relax when the crisis suddenly diminishes and stabilizes for a period of time, as if things were returning to the regular routine. Everyone may be laughing at Kabbalists, saying: “Why were you trying to scare us by saying that something awful is coming and that this will last forever until we reject our egoism? Now everything is returning to normal and we are back to the celebration of life.” The fact is, we need to be patient, because a second and a third wave are on the way, like labor contractions that will result in the birth – our exit out of our egoism and entrance into the quality of bestowal.

However, we would like to reduce the duration of these pains as much as possible, so the birth will happen quickly, even immediately – in one push. This is possible; the time between the contractions can be significantly reduced, as well as the number of contractions. This is how we can accelerate the process of the birth.

A baby is born when the contractions accelerate so much that they merge into a single contraction, instead of coming one after another. They no longer come little by little, but become concentrated in one effort. So let us make our birth happen quickly, because it’s an unpleasant process and the best way to go through it is in one push – in the current crisis, rather than in recurring crises.

This is how the spiritual process works. In the spiritual birth, the contractions signify that the birth is taking place. It’s not like in our corporeal world, which is corrupted by egoism, where a woman may feel contractions even a month before the birth. In a corrected spiritual object, the contractions quickly concentrate around the embryo and push it out. The labor pains are meant to open the “doors” through which the newborn will come into the new world.
(Excerpt from the lesson on 01.29.2009, from 34:08 – 37:59)

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Attaining the Worlds Beyond: Chapter 22. “Spiritual Development”

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On 01.30.2009 at 7:00pm Israel time, about 300 of our friends from around the world, who had already arrived for the Congress, gathered at our Bnei Baruch center. We had a lesson in preparation to the Congress, on the theme, “Uniting for Good”

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In the News (from The American Prospect): Families went on a spending binge over the last 30 years because:

– women went into paid work,
– everyone started working longer hours,
– then, when these tactics gave out, everyone went deeper and deeper into debt.

But now families cannot work more hours than they did before and won’t be able to borrow as much, either. Americans are now discovering they can exist surprisingly well buying fewer of the things they never really needed to begin with. What we most lack, or are in danger of losing, are the things we use in common – clean air, clean water, public parks, good schools, and public transportation, as well as social safety nets to catch those of us who fall.

My Comment: This is an example of how a little bit of suffering makes people wiser. However, in addition to being satisfied with the bare necessities, we will still have to develop the inner qualities of love and bestowal to others. But these are subsequent stages, which will come after subsequent suffering.

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Article: “One Law”

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A question I received: What should my attitude be towards the Holocaust? Also, being that the “Introduction to the Book of Zohar” says that all of the nations could become Nazi regimes if Israel doesn’t fulfill its duty, and also given that everything in this world is pre-determined, how am I to feel anything but fear and hatred towards the Creator?

My Answer: See Baal HaSulam’s article “Matan Torah (The Revelation of Godliness)”: Kabbalah (the authentic Torah, Torah Emet,) was given to us in order to correct the egoistic desire “to fulfill only yourself” into the altruistic desire “to fulfill others.” Since the entire system of souls is built as a pyramid, similar to our physical body, the correction isn’t done by all the souls at the same time, but happens in a specific order. This order depends on the souls’ desire to break free from “pursuing things in order to receive.”

This concealed desire to reveal the Creator is called “the point in the heart.” The heart is all of a person’s desires, and the point in the heart is the desire for the Creator. This is how parts of the souls unite together and – within their unity – reveal the Creator. This is referred to as the “Reception of the Torah” (revelation of the Light, the Creator).

Also, see Baal HaSulam’s article “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”: Receiving the method of correction (Torah or Kabbalah) is only the initial stage in the general correction of all the souls. Hence, the corrected part must fall into the common egoism, intermix with the uncorrected part – the rest of humanity, so together they can become corrected.

In addition, see Baal HaSulam’s article “Introduction to the Book of Zohar (item70)“: When egoism becomes revealed as evil in the world as a whole, this is the beginning of the period of the revelation of Kabbalah, the method of the entire world’s correction. But because this method is still in the possession of the group of people who have used it – the people of Israel, they must master it and pass it on to all the nations of the world. The destiny of the people of Israel and of the entire world depends only on this. When the method is not passed on in time, then all kinds of problems appear in the world – aggression, wars, extermination, and so on, including the Holocaust.

You cannot justify the Creator because the degree of the righteous (one who justifies the Creator) is still far above you. Therefore, I can understand what you are feeling, though I do not feel the same way.

Related News Story (from Associated Press): Israel’s chief rabbinate severed ties yesterday with the Vatican to protest a papal decision to reinstate a bishop who publicly denied that six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust.

Related Material:
Laitman.com: What Is the Spiritual Root of the Holocaust?
Laitman.com: On Good and Evil
Laitman.com: Why Does Everyone Hate Israel?
Shamati #66 “The Giving of the Torah”
The Introduction to the Book “From the Mouth of a Wise Man” – Lesson of June 16, 2004

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Here you can view the detailed schedule of the International Kabbalah Congress (for children and adults), held on February 2 – 4, 2009. (The schedule is subject to change, so please check it periodically.)

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In the News (from The Irish Times): “Scientists learn how to read our mind” The fanciful notion of mind-reading has moved from science fiction to science fact. A research group in London led by an Irish scientist has used brain scans and a computer to decipher a person’s thoughts.

My Comment: Science is closer than ever to the borderline between our world and the Upper World. Science reveals this world, which is perceived within the desire “to receive for oneself.” However, the Upper World is perceived within the desire “to give to others” and is revealed through Kabbalah. There will be no place left for mysticism and religion!

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